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By Helen ^sKe Hays 



The Antietam and Its Bridges 

The Annals of an Historic Stream 

A Little Maryland Garden 



The Antietam and Its Bridges 



The Annals of an Historic Stream 



By 
Helen Ashe Hays 



IVith 17 Photogravures from Photographs by 
John C. Artz 






G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

(Tbe f;nicf;erbocf!ec pvces 

1910 



fj 






Copyright. 1910 

BY 

HELEN ASHE HAYS 



• * • 



Vbe Ytniclierbociier press, tXew ]?ork 



CCI,A265500 



Contents 



PART I. THE COUNTRY 



HAPTE 
I. 


R 

Along the Antietam 


PAGE 

,3 


II. 


The Valley 


II 


III. 


The Making of Roads . 


. 19 


IV.. 


The Masonry Arch 


. 30 


V. 


The Levy Court .... 


. 40 


VI. 


The County Commissioners . 


• 47 



VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 



PART II. THE BRIDGES 

Old Sharpsburg ...... 

The Lower Antietam and Burnside's Bridge 

Keedysville and the Hitt Bridge 

The Bridge at Delemere .... 

The Bridges at Roxbury, Claggett's, and 
Rose's Mills ...... 



61 

74 
86 

97 



109 
121 

139 



The Bridge at Funkstown .... 
The Bridge at Hagerstown . . . , 
The New Bridge and the Bridge at Old Forge 157 
The Two Bridges at Leitersburg . .168 



111 



Illustrations 



PAGE 



The Bridge at Devil's Backbone 

Leitersburg Road Bridge 

Trovinger's Mill 

The Bridge at Old Forge . 

The Bridge at Roxbury 

The Second Funkstown Bridge . 

The Bridge at Antietam Iron Works 

Burnside's Bridge 

The Hitt Bridge 

The Bridge at Delemere . 

The Bridge at Rose's Mill 

The Bridge at Claggett's Mill 

Claggett's Mill 

Funkstown Turnpike Bridge 

Hager's Bridge 

The Bridge on the Cavetown Turnpike 

The Leitersburg Turnpike Bridge . 



Frontispiece ^ 






8 ^ 






14. 






24 






44. 






. 54-' 






. 68 






. 76' 






. 88 






. 98-^ 






. 112 






. 118 






124. 






. 128 ''' 






. 142 






. 160 






. 172 



Part I: The Country 



Chapter I 

Along the Antietam 

THERE is a stream running through Washington County, 
Maryland, from the Pennsylvania line to the Potomac 
River, whose name will be famous as long as America 
endures, the placid Antietam. 

It has been impossible to trace the meaning of its name, 
but tradition says that it is of Indian origin. It is probably 
the name of an Indian chief, and in early times its musical 
syllables were spelled in various ways. We find it written 
"Anteatem, " and oftener yet in the rather cannibalistic 
form of "Anti-Eatem. " It is a beautiful, wide stream, 
meandering slowly through a country of great beauty and 
interest. Sycamores lean their dappled trunks across it, 
and water willows mark its course with soft masses of 
grayish foliage while they hide it from view. A tangle of 
blackberries and wild roses, of papaws and hazel bushes, 
of elder and poisonous ivy, fringes its banks. Its waters 
are not sparkling; they often carry a large amount of muddy 
matter which gives the stream a thick and turgid appearance, 
and after heavy rains it will carry this earthy charge for 
days. But it is peacefully beautiful, and flows through one 
of the richest farming lands in America. 

Before the days when its name passed into history, many 

3 



4 tTbe antietam 

settlements of early colonists grew up along its banks. 
Germans from the Fatherland and English from the Mother- 
country came to the valley of the Antietam, bringing with 
them the habits, the beliefs and industries of the old world. 
Relics of these pioneer days are found in plenty along the 
stream. Its banks still bear the traces of those early 
times, and of the initial conquest of the land from the 
wilderness and the Indians. 

When we think of those early settlers we must remember 
their relation to the outside world. Between them and the 
coast, with its towns and its shipping trade with Europe, 
was the blue wall of the Alleghany mountains, isolating the 
valley and making it a thing apart. It was entered only 
after a toilsome journey, and the people who settled in it 
cut themselves off, to a great extent, from the coast land to 
the East and the trading posts of the West. They found 
themselves in a cradle between the mountains, whose ranges 
to the east and west they somewhat inconsequently called 
the North and South mountains. Here they went patiently 
to work to establish settlements which should be safe from 
Indian interference, and give them the easy subsistence 
which the fertility of the soil promised. 

The Antietam flows under the slopes of the South Moun- 
tain, gathering up the waters of smaller streams on its way 
to the Potomac. It rises in Pennsylvania, and flows 
through the eastern part of the Hagerstown valley till it 
enters the Potomac below Sharpsburg. The Little An- 
tietam joins it near Keedysville, Beaver Creek below the 
Delemere bridge, and many little streams and brooks add 
their tribute to its waters. 

What various scenes, and what a strange procession of 



along tbe Hntietam 5 

peoples this Antietam Creek has mirrored ! In the old days, 
the Indians travelled along its banks, and waded in its 
shallows. There were then no crossings except such as 
the kindly fords allowed. Perhaps a tree trunk thrown 
across the stream at its narrowest would serve for a bridge 
until the next high water bore it away. But the Indian, 
always able to bide his time and adapt his journey to the 
physical features of the country, did not force the passage 
of the stream. 

In the earliest days of which we have records, the Shaw- 
nees came to the banks of the Antietam, and after them 
the Delawares and Catawbas, painted and clad in skins, 
with feathered heads. Many a naked babe was dipped in 
the stream, even when ice clung to the banks, to harden its 
muscles and fit it for life in the open. Many an Indian girl 
studied her face in the waters, and admired her bright eyes 
and slender figure. But these wandering people left no 
imprint on the country, building neither monuments nor 
bridges nor altars to their gods. Always moving to and fro, 
roaming through forest and by stream, and warring against 
other tribes, passed the Shawnees, the most restless of them 
all. They moved to the West and the Antietam saw no 
more of them. But others came who were powerful men and 
great fighters, the Delawares from Pennsylvania and their 
hereditary enemies, the Catawbas from the Carolinas. 

When the earliest settlers began to raise their log houses, 
they were on friendly terms with the Indians, and were not 
molested by them. The savages, however, fought among . 
themselves, and we know of two great battles which took 
place in the valley, one where the Antietam, the other where 
the Conococheague, empty their waters into the Potomac. 



6 Zhc antietam 

It is interesting in this connection to notice the occurrence 
of fords at the mouth of streams, which were of such impor- 
tance to the Indians who made no bridges. In his work on 
historic highways, Mr. Hurlbutt tells us that the sagacity 
of the Indian led him to the conclusion that where one 
stream empties its waters into another was often found the 
best and safest ford. This would seem an anomaly, for it 
would naturally be supposed that in such places the water 
would be deep and the crossing dangerous. In his studies 
of Indian highways, the mass of evidence on this subject 
pointed to a law. He considered Braddock's ford over the 
Monongahela at the mouth of Turtle Creek, and the fords 
over the Muskingum at the mouth of Sandy Creek, and over 
the Ohio at the mouths of the Wheeling and Sunfish creeks, 
and the Little and Great Kanawha and Licking rivers. 
And studying it out he arrived at this explanation, that 
streams in their natural state, where their course has not 
been altered by dredging or any work of human agency, 
carrying down a certain amount of sand and mud, de- 
posit this sediment when they meet the waters of another 
stream or river; and this deposit makes a sort of bar which 
can be followed, and makes a fairly safe and shallow cross- 
ing. It was an important factor in Indian travel. 

At the mouth of the Conococheague where Williamsport 
now stands, and where the creek enters the Potomac, there 
is one of these crossings. Here a great battle was fought 
between the Delaware and Catawba tribes, and all the 
implements of Indian warfare have been unearthed beside 
the stream. Again, below Sharpsburg where the Antietam 
flows into the river, there was a famous fight, and bones, 
skulls, and arrowheads can be scratched out of the earth 



along tbe antietam 7 

to-day on the scene of the conflict. This fight was so 
illustrative of Indian character that the story is worth 
telling, for the sake of an understanding of the tribes 
with whom the white men of that day were brought in 
contact. 

It took place in 1736, a few years before the earliest 
grants of land were made to settlers along the Antietam. 
The valley was so fertile, and so full of game and fish, that 
it was a favorite hunting ground for warriors both from 
the North and South, and parties were constantly passing 
through it. Before the great battle was fought, the Dela- 
wares hunted through it, and being successful and daring, 
they moved farther and farther south until they came into 
the country of the Catawbas. As they were fat with good 
things they became insolent, and did unspeakable things to 
the Catawbas. This roused the latter to such rage and 
resentment that they armed themselves, and as the Dela- 
wares started northward again they were followed by their 
enemies. At the mouth of the Antietam, where it deposits 
its burden of silt, the retreating braves made their camp, and 
here the Catawbas came up with them and gave battle. 
This time the race was to the swift and the battle to the 
strong. The Delawares met their pursuers J05rfully, turn- 
ing the lust of the chase to the lust of fighting. The valley 
rang with shoutings and the horrid cries of Indian warfare. 
One by one the Catawbas were struck down; smaller and 
smaller grew their numbers till where they had stood by 
tens, they fought by twos and threes. The triumphant 
Delawares annihilated the enemies whom they had stirred 
up by their evil deeds — all but one. One man of the Cataw- 
bas fled, while the scalps of his tribe were bleeding in the 



8 ^be Hntietam 

hands of his foes. As if by a miracle he escaped from the 
battlefield, and fled northward. 

Now comes an instance of Indian character, vindictive, 
merciless, and tireless. After the battle, when the warriors 
displayed their dangling scalps, one man alone of the Dela- 
wares had no trophy to show. He had not a single scalp, 
and something must be done to retrieve his disgrace. He 
started in pursuit of the one enemy who had escaped. For 
a long journey of one hundred miles he tracked the 
unfortunate Catawba, and finally coming upon him on the 
banks of the Susquehanna, he tomahawked him and took 
his scalp back to the tribe. 

There is another story, of Indian love, quite as terrible 
in its way as of Indian hate, which took place at this same 
time beside the Antietam. 

A young French girl, named Rosaline, lived with her 
father and mother and little brother on the Red Hill, near 
Keedysville by the Antietam. No doubt she was slender 
and dark-eyed, and had the grace of her countrywomen. 
That she was attractive enough to inspire a savage passion 
we learn from her story. 

This French settler and his family lived in a log house, 
leading a life which, with all its simplicity, was not 
necessarily one of privation in this rich and fertile valley. 
When Rosaline was growing to womanhood, the battle be- 
tween the Catawbas and Delawares was fought. Hearing 
the dreadful sounds of the battle, the settler and his family 
fled to the South Mountain, where they took refuge in a 
hiding place known to them. Here they stayed for days, 
afraid to venture back to the house for fear the Indians 
might still be in the neighborhood. For though ordinarily 



aiona tbe antletam 9 

on friendly terms with them, the father feared that when 
fired with the rage of battle, they might kill anything that 
came in their way. 

For days they lay hidden, suffering for want of food, 
and exposed to the weather. Added to this, the women and 
the child suffered from fear, the most demoralizing agent 
that tender organizations can be subjected to. The shouts 
of the savages rang in their ears and the constant dread that 
painted men with tomahawks might find out their hiding 
place reduced them to such a state of terror and weakness 
that when Orlando thought it safe to return the poor wife 
sickened with a fever. The little boy, whose soul had been 
tortured with the dread of the red men, fell ill with her, and 
these poor victims of the frontier died. Rosaline, stricken 
with grief, and suffering as the others had done from ex- 
posure and agitation, was so weakened by these trials 
that she left the house and its melancholy associations, 
and went to stay with neighbors. While with these friends 
she drank the waters of a spring near-by, and in a short time 
was wonderfully better. The recovery was attributed to 
the waters of the spring, which were really of a healing 
nature, and afterwards became famous through the country 
as the "Belinda Springs." 

Strong and w^ell again, Rosaline went back to her father 
on the Red Hill, Perhaps it would have been better for 
her to have died with her mother and little brother, than 
to have regained her health and beauty, for the next act 
in her eventful life was that a Catawba chief, a tall and 
handsome savage, saw her and going to her father demanded 
her in marriage. One can imagine the terror of the young 
girl with such a lover, the dread of him by night and day; 



lo Zbc Hntietam 

how she would fear to be alone in the cabin and follow her 
father whenever he was near, and fly to the neighbors when 
hunting or trading took him away from her. The unfor- 
tunate Rosaline lived in daily fear, and trembled at the 
sight of every deerskin robe and feathered head. 

One night when she and her father sat by the open cabin 
door, a sudden shot struck Orlando and he fell dead at her 
feet. The terrified girl hardly realized what had happened 
when a tall figure appeared in the doorway, and her Indian 
lover triumphantly bore her away to his tribe. There was 
no one to save her, none but savages to see her terror, and 
Indian women to give her such comfort as they could, and 
reconcile her to her lot. Nothing more was ever heard of 
her. She had no chance of escape, and one can only hope 
that the life of the woods and the wanderings of the tribe 
became endurable to her, as we know from old records they 
did become to other captive women. It must be said, how- 
ever, that these recorded instances have been of those taken 
as children and reared in Indian ways. It was another 
thing for a girl who had grown almost to womanhood 
among her own people, and had been taken at the price of 
her father's life, to reconcile herself to a wandering existence 
with savages. 



chapter II 

The Valley 

BEFORE the time came when men could build bridges 
over the Antietam, the valley passed through a period 
of storm and stress. The friendly relations between the 
white settlers and the Indians did not continue, but it was 
through the differences between the white races on the 
continent that they came to an end. The French and Eng- 
lish, hereditary enemies, could not live in peace together 
even in such wide spaces as America afforded, and their 
strife brought about a warfare with the Indians which let 
loose savage passions, and drove white men for a period 
entirely away from the valley of the Antietam. 

The Indians loved the French much better than the 
English. The Frenchmen were kind and sensible in their 
treatment of them. They tried to save them from the 
demoralization of drink, and if a trader sold liquor to them 
he was punished by being forbidden the sacrament. French- 
men married Indian wives, and were kind to them, and the 
red men looked upon them as friends. 

The English were respected but not loved. "Kicks, not 
kisses," is the rule for British mastery the world over, and 
the dominant race is loved accordingly in its foreign pos- 
sessions. The Delawares told an Englishman, four or 



1 1 



12 



Zl)c Hntietam 



five years after the French and Indian War was ended, that 
while the sun shone they would be at enmity with them. 

The French and Indian War not only called the settlers 
away from their cabins to fight, but it had a much worse 
consequence; the Indian allies of the French were loosed 
upon the settlements to murder women and children. The 
results in the Antietam valley were desperate. Indians 
raided it again and again, murdering the settlers whenever 
they could, and destroying their property. For a time the 
valley was practically deserted. George Washington wrote 
of it in 1756, when the war was at its height: 

"The whole settlement of Conococheague " (the name 
given at that time to all the country between the mountains) 
"in Maryland is fled, and there remains but only two families 
from thence to Predericktown. That the Maryland settle- 
ments are all abandoned is certainly a fact, as I had the 
accounts transmitted to me by several hands and confirmed 
yesterday, the 28th, by Henry Brinker, who left Monocacy 
the day before, and who also affirms that 350 wagons passed 
that place to avoid the enemy within the space of three 
days." 

There were a few houses strongly built for defence which 
served as forts for the people w^ho remained. One was the 
house of Moses Chapline near the Antietam, in the neighbor- 
hood of Keedysville, where a number took refuge. An- 
other was the house of Thomas Cresap, the old Indian 
fighter, on the Long Meadows, still spoken of as Cresap 's 
Fort. Fort Frederick was built near Hancock, and was put 
in command of Joseph Chapline, who left his home near 
Sharpsburg and did not return till the close of the war, and 
many families took refuge in it. 



Zl)C IDallep 13 

For more than three years the desolation of the valley 
continued, and the sound of the settler's axe was stilled. 
The Antietam no longer turned the mills, nor did traders 
cross its fords. The<^spell of fear was on the valley, and 
animals returned to the stream as in the days before the 
white man came. 

An historic name was at this time written in the annals 
of the valley. Many years must pass before the mark that 
Braddock made will be obliterated. A part of his army, 
which was described by Franklin as "a slender line almost 
four miles long, " marched direct from Alexandria to Win- 
chester. But Braddock himself went to meet Franklin at 
Frederick, and from that point a regiment under Colonel 
Dunbar passed over the South Mountain by Turner's Gap, 
and crossed the Antietam twice, at Keedysville and at 
Delemere, on their way to the Potomac at Williamsport. 
At the Hitt bridge near Keedysville a road is pointed out, 
coming down to the water by a steep declivity, now almost 
abandoned in favor of one that approaches it by a more 
gentle slope. This abrupt and difhcult track is Braddock's 
road, and characteristic of his methods. He chose the 
straightest way, and marched on in spite of all obstacles, 
tearing out forest trees so that it is said that where Brad- 
dock's army passed, trees never grew again. 

He had a disdain of details, and did not inform himself 
very well of the country he was to pass through. When he 
heard that the Antietam had to be crossed, he sent a de- 
tachment on with orders to seize all the boats and canoes 
on the river for the use of his army, taking it for granted that 
it was both wide and deep. When the troops reached it, 
they found good fords at both places. 



14 ITbc Hntietam 

Poor British bulldog, marching to his death; not in the 
least appreciating the skill of his foes, and disdaining any 
way of fighting that was not time-honored and English. 
He was one of many victims who have fallen through this 
fatal slowness of apprehension. Tradition tells us that he 
started out on this expedition in a handsome travelling 
chariot, and damned the roads heartily when he found he 
had to give it up. Most characteristic is the account given 
by the aide-de-camp who brought him off the field wounded, 
and attended him till his death. He tells that for all of 
the first day General Braddock lay, and said not a word till 
night came, and then only, 

"Who would have thought it!" 

Again he was silent for all of the next day. Then 
saying, 

"We shall better know how to deal with them another 
time," he turned and died. 

When the war was over the settlers returned to their 
homes, once more to get their livelihood from the soil. 
Again the banks of the Antietam echoed to the sounds of 
hammer and anvil, of axe and saw, and once more its flow 
gave the impulse to numerous mills. The stream was like 
the fairy godmother of the old tales, ready with her gifts 
to all who favored her. To-day we still have some of these 
mills standing, nearly a century and a half old, massive 
buildings with thick walls, sleepy and venerable by the 
sleepy stream, toned by time into a perfect harmony with the 
hoary tree trunks and gray rocks beside them. Others are 
in ruins, their broken walls pierced by arched waterways 
and window openings, half veiled with creepers and guarded 
by beds of nettles and thistles from too curious approach. 




:^^.ii 



/■ 



/ 



Zhc IDalle^ 15 

Now too was laid the foundation of a town which was to 
grow into a city and give its name to the valley : Elizabeth- 
Hager's-Town. In the earliest Hagerstown newspapers 
which we still have, there are numerous references to and 
advertisements of the mills. There was a large stone paper- 
mill, and small grist-mill, and saw-mill situated on the 
Antietam Creek, contiguous to Hagerstown on the main 
road through Charlton's Gap to Baltimore. This road 
we now know as the Cavetown turnpike. There was the 
dyeing and fulling-mill of Martin Baechtel, where they would 
receive woollen yarn for thick cloth and linsey, and the 
paper-mill of John Rohrer, lying near the Marsh. 

Stull's mill was close to Hagerstown, and an advertise- 
ment with reference to it makes one realize that boys were 
boys one hundred years ago, just as they are to-day. A 
miller living near the stream complains in the paper that, 

"Whereas a number of boys and young men have again 
commenced the indelicate habit of bathing within sight 
of Stull's Old Mill and dwelling house, to the annoyance 
of the subscriber's family, all persons are forewarned to 
abstain from the practice in future, between the Mill and 
the Mouth of Bowman's Run " 

That the boys cared very little for the feelings of these 
decorous persons is evident from the further notice inserted 
at a later date on the same subject, ending with the words, 

"Boys in general, and apprentices in particular, would 
do well to be cautious how they conduct themselves." 

Among the places advertised for sale was a tract called 
"Salubria, " having the advantage of being only one mile 



i6 Z\)c antictam 

from three large and very extensive Merchant Mills, where 
a ready sale for the produce of the farm could be had on any 
day in the year. The description goes on to say that this 
farm is called a dry farm, "but it has this immense advan- 
tage over other dry farms. It lies within a short mile of 
the Antietam Creek, on the public and resorted road, and 
the stock can be driven at all times over this road to the 
creek." Another tract called "Hopewell" is near it, and 
within three hundred yards of the Antietam and near to 
two Merchant Mills. 

A good still-house was a very common adjunct to the mill. 
One often sees such advertisements as, "A good dwelling 
house and two distilleries"; "A log house, and distillery 
in full operation"; "A two story dwelling house, Spring 
house, and Large Stone House, used alternately as Brew 
House and Distillery." One has not far to look to find the 
reason for this. In the wretched condition of the roads it 
was easier for the farmer to make a profit by turning his 
corn and rye into whiskey, and so reduce its bulk and find a 
ready sale for it, than by transporting it to the market in 
Baltimore. Whiskey was therefore cheap because it was 
plenty, and pure because there was no reason to adulterate 
it, and the valley had a reputation for being a great drinking 
place. Travellers often made mention of it, and said that 
the inns where they put up were generally scenes of carousal 
before the evening was over. 

As early as 1748 we have a reference to Maryland as a 
great whiskey producing place, in a speech made by Conrad 
Weiser to the Indians at their village of Kuskuskis, where 
he met the Delawares, the Mohawks, and deputies from 
several nations. These Indians complained to him that the 



tTbe IDallci? 17 

English traders brought in Hquor, and protested against its 
being sold to their people. The envoy from Philadelphia 
replied that it was in their power to have it stopped if they 
were in earnest. "You go yourselves," he said in reply, 
"and buy horse-loads of strong liquor. But the other day 
an Indian came to this town out of Maryland, with three 
horse-loads of liquor, so it appears you love it so well you 
cannot be without it. " 

Before the passing of the excise law reduced its output, 
whiskey was used to a certain extent as a medium of ex- 
change in Maryland. A gallon of whiskey was equivalent 
to a shilling of money, in making a trade. The passing of 
the law raised the celebrated Whiskey Insurrection in 
Pennsylvania, but though it was equally unwelcome to the 
small farmers in the Hagerstown valley, and along the 
slopes of the South Mountain, where there were many little 
stills, the resistance diminished in violence as it spread 
away from its centre. The best element of the community 
upheld the government, and tried to reconcile the small 
producers of whiskey to the payment of the tax. 

For several years before the Whiskey Rebellion broke 
out, the country was at war with the Indians of the North- 
west. Hagerstown was a sort of recruiting camp where 
companies were raised and drilled. Captains Lewis and 
Price, and Lieutenant-Colonels Orndorff, Davis, Sprigg, and 
Van Lear, were among the most active in fitting out com- 
panies and drilling them. When, however, a draft was called 
for men from each regiment to march into Pennsylvania 
and help enforce the excise law, rioting broke out, absurd 
stories were spread among the most ignorant people about 
the new tax, and all the baser element of the community 



i8 ZTbe Hntietam 

was in an uproar. It is said that the outbreak was quite 
as much the result of private spite, which vented itself 
in this way, as of a real determination to resist the govern- 
ment. 

The best citizens armed themselves and patrolled the 
town. A message was sent to the Governor at Annapolis, 
who immediately came to Hagerstown to judge of the 
extent of the disaffection. General Bailey marched to the 
town with over three hundred troops and made arrests 
among the most turbulent mischief makers. In a few 
days order was restored, and he left Hagerstown; but an- 
other regiment on its way to the West was detained at the 
town for a short time, to make sure that the community 
had settled down again to a state of order and security. 
Perhaps the preponderance of orderly and law-abiding 
Germans among the settlers of the valley was the cause of 
the comparative ease with which the new law was enforced, 
unpopular as it was, while in the neighboring State there 
were numbers of Scotch- Irish, a stubborn people whose 
fighting blood was easily roused, and hot for a disturbance. 
Whatever the cause, the wave of insurrection which spread 
from Pennsylvania subsided without causing serious dis- 
affection in the Antietam valley. The owners of the numer- 
ous small stills were obliged to give way before public opinion 
and pay the tax, or else put their com and rye to some other 
use. 

To-day whiskey is manufactured in large quantities in 
the county, but instead of the little stills on every farm, the 
ugly buildings of a modern distillery disfigure the banks of 
the Antietam, in the neighborhood of one of its old bridges. 



chapter III 

The Making of Roads 

TPHE new century found a fairly settled community in the 

'"' valley of the Antietam. The patriots who had left 

their farms to fight in the Revolutionary War were once 

more cultivating them. The county seat had grown into an 

attractive town. Many new industries had sprung up, 

and it became a matter of importance to have good and 

practicable communication with the world outside the 

valley. The seaports to the east and the great prairie 

country to the west offered markets for their wares, and the 

thrifty settlers were anxious to reach them. 

We have a pleasant sketch of Hagerstown in the early 

part of the century, in a book of travel written by William 

Faux, an Englishman. He speaks first of the beautiful, 

fruitful vale, forty miles long and seven broad, partly in 

Maryland and partly in Virginia, which is the only really 

fertile spot which he has seen north of Carolina. "Here, " 

says he, "I found a fine people, trees full of fruit, evidently 

planted as are many other choice trees, by the hand of 

nature." After passing through Frederick Town, which he 

calls quite English in appearance, he mentions the fertility 

of the valley once more, and says that it yields the finest 

19 



20 ^be antietam 

Indian corn he has yet seen, and is the best wheat land 
in America, and has the best farms and farmers in the land. 

Crossing the mountain he comes down into the valley of 
the Antietam, and thus describes the town: "We supped 
and slept at Hagers-Town, a market town, with three 
Dutch gothic churches, adorned with tall spires, and a good 
courthouse. This town is highly delightful, and almost 
surrounded by small mountains, the scenery is beautiful, 
and both in and around an air of grandeur prevails ; except 
indeed at our tavern, where, though it is Sunday, all is 
smoke and fire, and Bacchus is god. " 

Like all travellers of that day he complains of the 
wretched condition of the roads, and says that one must 
have nerves of iron and brass to survive a stage journey 
through the country. Every variety of discomfort was 
endured. On the mountains were stumps and rocks, steep 
declivities and dangers of every sort. In the valleys they 
stuck deep in the mud. The crossings of the streams were 
dangerous. The limestone ridges between the mountains 
had nothing done to smooth their roughness. The traveller 
was bumped and tossed about till he was black and blue ; 
and sometimes thrown out altogether at the risk of his 
bones, when the stage turned over in some specially bad 
part of the road. 

The tendency of the times was still to move westward. 
Faux, who was an observer of men as well as countries, 
says, "The American has always something better in his 
eye farther West. He lives and dies on hope." Tales of 
the western country continued to unsettle men, and create 
an atmosphere of unrest. The constant temptation was 
to sell out and move on. It is therefore much to the credit 



^be HDaF^tnG of 1Roat)9 21 

of the people of the Hagerstown valley that they set them- 
selves to making a permanent community, and in the in- 
dustries which sprang up so thickly along the Antietam, 
there was something to keep the restless spirits from 
fretting at the chain. 

One of the most prominent men of the day was Nathaniel 
Rochester, who afterward founded the town of Rochester 
in the State of New York. He was a man of many 
interests, and while he lived in Hagerstown he owned a 
flouring mill, and had an interest in a rope walk, and a nail 
factory. He held the various offices of Judge of the 
County Court, Postmaster, and Sheriff, and contrived to 
make frequent trips to Kentucky and New York, to look 
after other interests in those States. He was the first Presi- 
dent of the Hagerstown Bank, and there his portrait can be 
seen to-day, done in pastel. It shows a handsome man, 
with a fine sensitive face, and rather poetic expression. He 
wears a drab coat and light blue stock, and there is some- 
thing very winning in his serious look. He moved to New 
York State in the early part of the new century, with his 
family, but not before he had made a strong impression on 
the community which he was leaving. He had always 
taken a great interest in public improvements, and he threw 
all the weight of his influence in the scale to help on the 
serious movement which began at this time, for better roads. 

The opening up of the Antietam valley by fine turnpike 
roads was the direct result of the building of the great 
National Road to the West. This road began at Cumber- 
land, in Maryland, and went from thence to the Ohio River. 
It then became a matter of great importance to have a 
good road from Baltimore to Cumberland, so that direct 



22 Zbc Hntietam 

communication might be established between the port of 
Baltimore and the Ohio. In i8 17 an act was passed author- 
izing a company to build a turnpike road from Hagers- 
town to the Conococheague Creek. It was the first link 
in the chain. The next was the turnpike road from Balti- 
more to Hagerstown. 

In 18 19 the road to the west of Hagerstown was built, 
and the Conococheague spanned by a noble bridge built by 
Silas Harry. It was the initial bridge, and set the standard 
for those which were later to cross the waters of the Antie- 
tam at so many points. We can easily imagine how, after 
seeing it, the Commissioners of the Antietam Hundreds 
must have determined to bridge their stream in the same 
substantial way. 

There was a very interesting controversy on the subject of 
the construction of bridges on the National Road in the 
western part of the county, which shows the determination 
of the men of that day to have the best models followed in 
bridge building. 

The government had agreed to bridge the streams with 
well made stone bridges; but owing to the expense this 
entailed an effort was made to substitute bridges with 
stone piers and a superstructure of wood. The men of 
Maryland were firm in their determination to have 
stone bridges complete, and no compromise. They be- 
lieved that in a few years the wood would rot, and require 
constant repairing. They stood for stone throughout, with 
pointing of hydraulic mortar. The Legislature of Maryland, 
they said, authorized the change in the location of the road 
through the State, provided the bridges were all made of 
stone. 



Zbc HDaMriQ of IRoabe 23 

John Hoye, of Cumberland, wrote to the Department at 
Washington, " I am sure the State will not receive the 
road without the stone bridges. " He referred them to the 
agreement, which stipulated for " substantial stone bridges, 
wherever the same may be necessary. " As the War De- 
partment contracted to have bridges built of stone, he could 
not report in favor of the State receiving the road until 
permanent stone bridges were erected. 

On the part of the government, Brigadier-General Gra- 
tiot wrote that there was not enough money appropriated 
to admit of stone bridges, and suggested that good wooden 
superstructures, well covered and painted, would last with 
a little care at least forty years, and perhaps longer. The 
Secretary of War approved of this suggestion, but they were 
held to the terms of their agreement. The Marylanders 
were not to be cajoled into the belief that stone piers and 
a superstructure of wood, even when nicely painted with 
three coats of white lead, and with a shingle roof, would be 
as good as stone throughout. 

Richard Delafield of the engineers tried his persuasions. 
Might they not be built with stone abutments and wing 
walls, with wooden superstructures? He said that the 
bridge over Wills Creek would cost $15,000.00 or more built 
of stone, but built of wood it would not cost more than 
$7000.00. 

But no persuasions would avail to turn them from the 
agreement, and the enduring stone was used throughout. 
The result has justified them, for after nearly a hundred 
years of travel, from the time of the prairie schooner and the 
Conestoga wagon to the automobile of to-day, they still stand 
an honor to their builders and an ornament to the country. 



24 ^be antletam 

In 1822 work was begun on the turnpike road from 
Boonsboro to Hagerstown, which was a continuation of the 
Baltimore and Frederick turnpike, and that between 
Frederick and Boonsboro. When the section of road be- 
tween Boonsboro and Hagerstown was finished the line of 
travel from the seaboard to the West would be complete, 
and through the valley so long isolated would pass the long- 
dreamed-of highway to the "back-country." 

The work on the roads brought a rough class of laborers 
to the country. The same William Faux whom we have 
quoted above writes at this time in his journal: 

"I learn that travellers to the West were last week 
publicly assaulted and plundered by hordes of labourers at 
work on the great Western road, who stopped the United 
States mail demanding dollars and guineas from all the 
travellers, and lifting up their axes to strike all who refused 
to deliver up their cash. " 

The same rough class of laborers when working on the 
Boonsboro and Hagerstown turnpike stirred up a great 
excitement in Funkstown when working near that sedate 
and peaceful village. On St. Patrick's day a wag paraded 
about the streets with a scarecrow in the likeness of a Paddy. 
This excited the Irishmen so much that it led to a grand 
fight. Stones flew, spades and mattocks were put to war- 
like uses, and Pat-riotism broke out in full force. The 
Hagerstown militia had to be called out to put an end to 
the fight. It was twenty-four hours before complete order 
was restored, and the affray was always referred to as the 
" Battle of Funkstown. " 

Another instance of the mischievous disposition of the 
laborers is indicated by an advertisement inserted in the 



Zbc ADakinG of IRoabe 25 

Hagerstown paper of that time. Mr. Lloyd offers a reward 
for the apprehension of an Irishman who set upon him 
murderously one night in Funkstown, with intent to kill. 
The Lloyds were the builders of the bridge across the Antie- 
tam for the turnpike company, and it would seem that one 
of his laborers tried to settle a difficulty in this way. It 
was, perhaps, owing to this lawlessness and turbulence on 
the part of the laborers, that in 1823 a bill was presented to 
the Legislature, asking that the United States mails should 
be carried in the daytime only, except when transported 
by water. 

In spite of all these difficulties and dangers, the turn- 
pikes were completed, and we find an enthusiastic account 
of travel over them by a writer of the day. This was a Mrs. 
Roy all, of Baltimore, whose account of her trip contrasts 
well with that of Mr. Faux, who had made the same journey 
over the old road. This lady was not likely to err on the 
side of mercy, for in her comments on men and manners she 
displays a sharp spirit of criticism. Her comments are so 
biting that we should have certainly taken her for a dis- 
appointed spinster, if there were not record to the contrary. 
She could find no fault, however, with the newly completed 
turnpike. 

"Better horses, or a better road," she writes, "is not 
to be found in the world, than the road from Boonsboro to 
Hagerstown. The road is a great curiosity, being turn- 
piked with white stone, broken into small regular pieces, and 
laid as firm as the original rock. No floor could be more 
level; it was one entire smooth pavement. It appeared 
more like sailing or flying rather than riding over land: 
not a jar nor a jolt the whole way. " 



26 ^be Hntietam 

Over this turnpike poured the tide of travel between 
Baltimore and the West. A little later coaches ran from 
Hagerstown to Gettysburg, and another line crossed the 
mountain by Nicholson's Gap, and reached Baltimore by 
way of Westminster. 

The travel by road of that time has no parallel to-day. 
The railroads many years ago took the heaviest class of 
vehicles off it, and more recently the trolleys running through 
the farm lands and over the mountains have furnished an 
easy way for the farmers and their families to come to town. 

Then the roads were filled with a lively mass of horses 
and vehicles. From the iron works came the great wagons 
with their teams of six, eight, and ten mules, gayly decked. 
Their owners were very proud of them, and the mules were 
as proud as all animals are that get such petting and 
grooming. It used to be a saying, when something hard to 
move was under discussion, that "All hell and Brien's 
mules could n't pull it out." 

The stage lines which travelled over the turnpikes were a 
credit to the country. Any one who has read Frederick 
Law Olmsted's account of staging through the Carolinas, 
with poor wrecks of horses, and rattletrap coaches driven 
by incompetent drivers, must draw a very favorable com- 
parison. The hauling of grain to the mills, of wool for 
manufacturing into cloth, of cotton and tobacco, the herds 
of cattle driven over the roads, the gay riding parties from 
Manor to Hall, made a spirited scene. The papers began 
to advertise turnpike, as well as plantation, wagons for sale. 

In the ten years between 1822 and 1832 six stone bridges 
were built across the Antietam. One was at Funkstown 
on the Boonsboro turnpike ; another near Sharpsburg at the 



ZTbe flDaMng of IRoaba 27 

Omdorff mill. Two were on the Gettysburg road, one 
near Hagerstown and the other near Leitersburg. One 
crossed the Antietam near Keedysville at Samuel Hitt's 
farm, and another at the Iron Works, below Sharpsburg. 

The workers in stone, finding themselves in demand, 
immediately began to combine for their own protection, 
just as they do to-day, and it is amusing to see so early in 
the nineteenth century the beginnings of trades-unions. 
Advertisements in the old newspapers call upon "Brick- 
layers and Stone Masons" to meet in order to form rates 
and regulations for the government of the trade, and to 
prevent misunderstandings and underbiddings. 

The stone masons were in demand to build something 
beside bridges for the Antietam. A company was formed 
to make it more useful for navigation by the use of locks, 
so that merchandise and produce could be shipped down 
it to the Potomac River. A notice was put in the papers 
offering liberal terms to such master masons as could be 
depended on, and who would employ hands adequate to 
the completion of one or more locks in the course of the 
season. Each lock was to contain about four hundred 
perches of stone work. Shortly after this notice appeared, 
there was an announcement to the subscribers to the Antie- 
tam Loan, that the first instalment of one fifth was payable 
at the Hagerstown Bank, and that a number of locks were 
already contracted for, and the work was progressing. 

The work was never finished, but the idea of making the 
stream navigable did not die out. A few years later an- 
other project was exploited for uniting the headwaters of 
the Conococheague and the Antietam, and making the 
former stream navigable as far as Chambersburg. If it 



28 Zbc antietam 

could have been carried out, it would have been a great 
help to the farmers and manufacturers of the valley, but 
it came to nothing, and the only water craft that enliven 
the Antietam are pleasure boats and the flat-bottomed 
boats of fishermen. 

We find another evidence of the increased interest in the 
Antietam about this time. A company was formed for 
stocking it with fish not native to its waters. At a meeting 
held in Hagerstown certain gentlemen set forth their desire 
to introduce fish of other streams into the creek. They said 
that the experiment had been already tried in the States of 
New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, and that in three 
years they had an abundance of fine fish. A bill was in- 
troduced into the Maryland Legislature, and an act 
passed entitled, "An Act for the preservation of the 
Breed of Fish in the Antietam Creek." After stating 
that several species of fine fresh-water fish not common 
to the stream were to be introduced, they prayed for 
the interference and aid of the Legislature for their pro- 
tection. It was, therefore, forbidden to fish with nets, 
baskets, gigs, or in any other manner except with the 
angling rod, nor should fishpots be erected as far up as the 
first mill-dam on the Antietam. If any free person should 
whip or beat the waters in the Antietam Creek or its tribu- 
tary streams, "with polls or sticks or other things," for the 
next three years, there was a forfeit of ten dollars, one half 
of which was to go to the informer and the other half to the 
Charity School Fund. For a slave the penalty was not 
more than ten lashes on the bare back, unless the master 
or mistress wished to redeem the forfeit by the pay- 
ment of ten dollars. Or, if it had been done by the 



Zbc fIDaMng of IRoabe 29 

order of the master or mistress, they should pay the fine 
themselves. 

The names signed to the petition were among the best in 
the community. Colonel Frisby Tilghman was the Presi- 
dent of the association, John Harry its Treasurer, and George 
Boerstler, Peter Sailes, David Claggett, William Booth, 
Edmund McCoy, Samuel Hitt, John Nafe, Daniel Boerstler, 
Joseph Graff, George Sheiss, and Seth Lane were members. 
We shall find, in following the bridges up the stream, that a 
number of these names were connected with the history of 
the stream from its earliest days. 



chapter IV 

The Masonry Arch 

THE Antietam runs through a Hmestone country. The 
Great Valley, which is here called the Hagerstown 
valley, is floored with limestone which swells and sinks 
along the valley trough with wave-like regularity. Be- 
tween the North and South mountains these limestone 
ridges, rising and falling, give diversity to the scenery, 
making dales and hollows in which farmsteads shelter 
and villages nestle. 

The limestone is of economic value. It fertilizes the 
fields under the natural action of frost which disintegrates 
it, and also when burned in kilns and spread upon them. It 
plays an important part in making Washington County 
one of the richest farming lands in the world. It is also 
used in making roads, and all the turnpikes which spread 
like a network over the country are macadamized with it. 
It is, moreover, a good building stone; when first quarried 
it is dark blue, and very agreeable in color, but by exposure 
to the weather it becomes a rather dusty gray. 

In every direction the limestone breaks through the soil 
and comes to sight, exposing the naked floor of the valley. 
Around these outcroppings the plough turns, and marks the 
fields in fantastic lines. On these rough islets thickets of 

3° 



Zhc nDasonrp Hrcb 31 

flowering shrubs take sanctuary, or groups of small dark 
evergreens give variety to the scene. Sometimes a hill- 
side is all masses of shelving rock, with cup-like hollows 
holding scarcely enough soil to give nourishment to the roots 
of mullein and thistles. 

Again it is seen in buildings which give a special char- 
acter to the country. We come upon large farmhouses, 
built of it more than a hundred years ago. These houses 
are not very attractive at first sight. They are severely 
simple stone structures with thick walls, and the doors 
and windows are of the greatest simplicity. Very rarely 
does an eyelet window in a gable vary the monotony with a 
touch of originality, or an arched doorway, set with fan- 
lights, break the rectangular lines. When these occur they 
are delightful variations, but for the most part the architec- 
ture is as plain and straightforward as the material. The 
richest farms have houses of an almost monastic severity. 
Yet when one becomes accustomed to the type it pleases 
by its repose and solidity. 

Again, throughout the country, one can find small stone 
churches. These are the houses of worship for sects 
which stripped religion of all outward adornment, and as is 
the faith which worships within, so is its outward manifesta- 
tion in stone. They are often of great age, gray and color- 
less, with clear glass in the windows, and without steeple or 
tower. They express in stone the convictions of the men 
who built them. The worshippers had fled from the beauty 
which concealed corruption, but beauty itself they could 
not flee from, and the forest trees, the wealth of wild vines, 
and all the irrepressible loveliness of nature outside the 
walls gratified a natural instinct in spite of them. 



32 Zbe antictam 

Besides the houses and the churches, there were many 
delightful little things built in stone throughout the country 
by the early settlers. There was the spring-house set under 
the hill, as solidly built as the house itself, with the green- 
sward about it, and perhaps a rose to trail its pink bloom 
over the roof in spring. Stone chimneys, wide and thickset, 
were built on outside the log houses and cabins. Occasion- 
ally a stone projection behind the chimney itself, with iron 
hooks on either side and an iron rod across, showed where 
the great outdoor feats of cooking were accomplished: the 
apple-butter boiling, the soap-making, and water heated at 
pig-killing time. 

But in none of these structures is there any evidence 
that the builder sought to express beauty, though often, 
especially in these little homely things, there is a great 
deal of charm. He aimed at solidity and strength. Fancy 
then the feelings of a stranger visiting for the first time this 
limestone country, who has driven through its hills and dales, 
seen the stone walls enclosing the fields, the oblong house, 
the great stone barn, the square spring-house. Every- 
where he has found the straight line, the simplest form. 
Only in the woodlands where the stone is untouched, has it 
taken beautiful shapes, domed and arched, painted with 
lichens and delicate mosses. He turns a hill slope, and 
sees before him a picture of great beauty; a silvery stream 
reflecting the blue sky, and spanning it a gray bridge of three 
arches, making hoops of light through which the landscape 
shines like a framed picture. In the dreamy light the stone 
seems ethereal, too lovely to be substantial. Castles and 
abbeys might neighbor these exquisite arches, and in the 
country through which he has just come, the transition 



^be fH>a6onr^ Brcb 33 

from the buildings to the bridges is like the change from 
prose to poetry. And if a stranger could feel this emotion 
of pleasure at the first sight of the bridge, we can well 
appreciate the feeling of one whose home was near it and 
who would know that at a certain turn of the road, its 
familiar arches and swelling abutments would come into 
sight. 

We shall have a better understanding of their real value 
if we glance back over the history of stone arched bridges, 
and see through what vicissitudes they have held their own. 
And first we must recognize that there is nothing that ap- 
peals to men more powerfully than lasting and beautiful 
work in stone. The material comes straight from nature, 
and the use of it in enduring works is the proof of man's 
power. The Egyptians are still the wonder of the world 
for their great feats in quarrying and moving vast masses 
of stone. Their massive temples, their graven figures and 
great tombs, have made an indelible mark on the globe. 
Yet with all their wonderful work in that material they 
have left us no masonry bridges. The character of the 
country did not call for such structures. 

The oldest example of the masonry arch is to be found 
in China, where it was used two thousand years before 
the Christian era. To-day there still exist arched bridges 
of great antiquity in this remarkable country, where every 
form of human knowledge seems to have been arrived at 
ages ago. In the western world it took centuries to de- 
velop the stone arched bridge. Greece, in spite of her 
noble architecture, never learned to bridge streams in this 
way. For a long time the nearest approach on the continent 
of Europe to the stone bridge now in use, was in the building 



34 ^be antictam 

of strong, thick piers and abutments, which were con- 
nected by a straight superstructure of wooden planks, or 
stone lintels. There is a stream on Dartmoor spanned by 
what is called the Celtic bridge, which is constructed in 
this way. 

In the Romans we find the master-workers in stone on 
the continent of Europe. It was a material which suited 
their powerful and dominating genius. They built high- 
ways to last for ages, and as they marched farther and 
farther on their way, conquering the remotest people of 
their time, they maintained communication with Rome by a 
magnificent system of roads and bridges. In all the coun- 
tries where they established their empire, we find traces 
of these works, but in a very different state of preservation. 
In Spain are perhaps the most perfect specimens for in 
Spain there was a people enlightened enough to give them 
the care required for their preservation, and to appreciate 
their grandeur and importance. The Moors, with their supe- 
rior intelligence, preserved the Roman bridges from decay. 

The same thing was true in Asia Minor. The Mohamme- 
dans and the Byzantine rulers valued this legacy of Roman 
occupation, and kept them in good condition. In Rome 
itself there was a special department for the care of bridges ; 
and those in the provinces were under military protection 
as long as the power of Rome lasted. 

After the fall of the empire a very different condition 
obtained throughout Europe. The great works of the 
Romans were neglected and allowed to fall into ruins. 
This was especially the case in France where Charlemagne 
gave the care of the bridges into the hands of the Bishops. 
The prelates exacted heavy tolls for their maintenance, but 



^be flDasonr^ Brcb 35 

they neglected the bridges, and in the dark middle ages 
of European history these public works were allowed to 
fall into decay. A very few specimens are now left in 
France. One of them, the bridge at St. Chamas, is an 
example of a certain sort of Roman bridge, erected with a 
memorial arch at either end. These can still be seen, 
though in ruins. But on the whole the matter of adequate 
crossings for the streams and rivers lapsed, and the art 
of bridge building was almost forgotten. 

The story of its revival in France is a very charming one, 
and essentially French; for the French can do the most 
practical things exquisitely, and the revival of the art came 
about in a way to please a poet. 

There was a shepherd boy in the south of France, about 
the middle of the twelfth century, named Benezet, who 
was told in a vision that he must build a bridge across the 
Rhone at Avignon. 

It is a strange subject — the messages given through the 
ages to shepherds. In the dawn of history shepherds left 
their sheep to become Kings of Egypt ; and from the days 
of the shepherd boy of Israel, to the Maid whose sheep 
pastured by Domremy, they have dreamed dreams and 
seen visions. To-day the shepherds of the Sierras, and the 
hot inland valleys of California, hear voices, but to no 
purpose, and if they listen to them too eagerly they are 
called mad. The solitude in which they live creates a 
world of unrealities; the silly sheep look up, but cannot 
bridge the vacancy between them and their masters. They 
are only fond and dumb; and to each of these words can 
be given its secondary meaning, to the one its old English 
use, and to the other its meaning in the vernacular of to-day. 



36 ^be antletam 

To a few men this discipline of loneliness has given the 
opportunity to nurse a great thought to maturity. They 
have heard voices saying, "Save the kingdom, " "Save the 
people," "Save the poor." Such was the voice Benezet 
heard. He thought of the heavy tolls and burdensome 
taxes exacted from the poor for crossing streams. It 
seemed to him that a man ought to cross a river as he 
would follow a road, as freely as he would breathe the air, 
so when the vision revealed to him that he was to help 
them in this way, he was not disobedient. With his heart 
full of joy he went to the Bishop of Avignon and asked 
for his approval and help. But the ecclesiastical ear 
is sometimes deaf to things out of the accustomed rou- 
tine. The Bishop listened coldly, and refused to give him 
any help. 

The ardent boy then went to the Provost of the town, 
and here he found a listener. This official gave him help 
and encouragement, and the great bridge was begun. It 
was years in the building, and before it was finished the 
shepherd-builder died and was buried in one of the col- 
umns of his bridge, and was afterwards canonized, and is 
known now as St, Benezet. But the building of the bridge 
at Avignon was not all that he accomphshed. He estab- 
lished a Brotherhood, called the "Freres Pontiers, " whose 
purpose was, "To build bridges and keep ferries," It 
spread through France and Italy, and existed and worked 
for three centuries. It is pleasant to know, after the 
coldness of the Bishop of Avignon, that the Pope sanc- 
tioned and encouraged the Brotherhood, and that what the 
lesser prelate had refused was granted by the highest author- 
ity in the Church. By it a great impulse was given to bridge 



ZTbc riDaeonrp Hrcb 37 

building in France, which did not die out. By the eigh- 
teenth century the French had a very fine department of 
"Fonts et chaussees. " It seems strange that a Frenchman 
should have been the architect of the famous London bridge, 
but it is a fact. London bridge was built in the latter part 
of the twelfth century, while the other bridges over the 
Thames, Blackfriars and Westminster were not erected 
until the eighteenth. 

All through rural England one sees such bridges as those 
over the Antietam, perhaps not so perfectly proportioned 
as our own. They were a matter of great pride for Eng- 
lishmen, and Fuller in his Book of Worthies, written in 
early 1600, makes special mention of the bridge at York, 
which had the highest and greatest arch of any in England, 
of the stately bridge at Bediford with twenty-four arches, 
of the beautiful bridge built by Queen Maud at Stratford 
Bow, which was before called Stratford but from having 
such a "fair arch or bow therein" was then called Stratford 
Bow. According to him it was from the peculiar formation 
of English rivers, too deep for fords, and too narrow for 
ferries, that there came to be so many eminent bridges, 
accounted amongst EngHsh excellencies. "Far be it from 
me," he says, "to wish the least ill to any. . . Yet this I 
could desire, that some covetous churls, may in their passing 
over waters, be put into peril without peril — understand 
me, might be endangered to fright, but not hurt — that others 
might fare the better for their fears, such misers being 
minded thereby to make or repair bridges for public safety 
and convenience." 

There are certain features appearing in some of the 
English bridges which have not been repeated in the bridges 



s8 JLbc antietam 

of Antietam. One is the making of recesses or nooks in 
the curtain walls, into which foot passengers can step aside 
and take refuge, when horses and vehicles cross the bridge. 
They are made by an elongation of the abutment, which 
instead of tapering to a point half-way up the walls of the 
bridge, are prolonged so as to form the floor of these recesses. 
The abutment is thus made to serve two purposes — the 
original one of a projection which advancing beyond the 
line of the bridge divides the ice packs and debris brought 
down in times of flood, throwing these obstacles off to 
either side so that they pass under the arches, instead of 
piling up against the piers of the bridge ; and the secondary 
one of furnishing these retreats for people crossing the 
bridge on foot. 

Although the bridges over the Antietam are nearly 
a hundred years old, they are still models for bridge build- 
ing. They have withstood the wear of time, and travel, of 
flood, and ice packs, and of war, that most terrible enemy of 
bridges. Above all, they are beautiful with a beauty that 
familiarity never lessens. 

The objection often made to stone bridges is, that the 
action of the weather injures them. There is a certain 
amount of disintegration of the mortar from frost, and 
from moisture working in between the stones. But this 
damage can be repaired, and to a great extent prevented, 
by keeping the copings in good condition. There are people 
who praise the iron bridge with its spidery superstructure 
and rigid lines, and its disagreeable vibration. As against 
these it is good to quote from a leading authority on scientific 
bridge building, as follows : 

"The close of the nineteenth century saw the metal 



Zbe riDaeonri? Hrcb 39 

bridge paramount over the masonry arch, in all respects 
except judged from the standpoint of beauty and durability. 
These points of superiority have maintained and will main- 
tain the masonry arch prominent among the bridge types 
of the engineer.'! 



Chapter V 

The Levy Court 

IN 1823, when the turnpike bridge at Funkstown was 
* built, the affairs of the county were regulated by the 
old Levy Court. Under its authority the first five stone 
bridges were built. The contract for the first, as well as for 
that which crossed the Antietam on the Leitersburg road, 
was given to a Pennsylvania firm, the Lloyds. The Om- 
dorff bridge, and that on what is now called the Cavetown 
turnpike, were both built by Silas Harry. The three now in 
existence bear tablets with the builders' names, and the 
dates of construction. 

The Hitt bridge near Keedysville unfortunately has no 
tablet, but the records show that it was built by John 
Weaver whose name first appears in connection with this 
bridge, in the county records. His later bridges were 
carefully marked with tablets, w4th but one exception, 
bearing not only the date, and the name of the builder, 
but sometimes in addition the names of the Commissioners 
under whose authority the bridge was erected. 

On looking over the records of the Levy Court before 
1823 one finds noted the constant expenditure of sums of 
money to keep the bridges in repair. There were repeated 
claims made for bridge money. What was spent in main- 

40 



^be %cv^ Court 41 

taining the wooden bridges would have gone far towards 
paying for structures which would last for years. 

To quote a few instances: there was an order given in 
18 1 2 to repair the bridge over the Antietam at Stull's mill 
just outside of Hagerstown, as it was almost impassable. In 
181 7 John Booth was authorized to build a new bridge over 
the Antietam, at his mill. He was allowed $550.00 for it, 
of which he was to have $225.00 for the first year, and 
$225.00 for the second. In 1820 he came again before the 
Commissioners and was given permission to cover his 
bridge with a roof. In 18 19 the Levy Court allowed Seth w^ 
Lane a certain sum for repairing the bridge at Harry's mill, 
and another man was paid for the repairs he had made to 
the bridge at Samuel Hitt's mill. All these sums, required 
season after season to repair and replace the various bridges, 
would have gone far, in each instance, towards paying for 
the erection of a substantial and permanent stone bridge. 
In 18 1 9 the stone bridge over the Conococheague on the 
western road was built; and as one public work breeds 
many, and as each wave of the rising tide strikes higher up 
the sand, the example of this well built and handsome bridge 
set the standard for bridge building all over the county. 
As the result of this impulse we have to-day the following 
bridges, still standing with but one exception, across the 
Antietam. To name them in their order from the mouth 
of the stream to the Pennsylvania line, they are as follows: 

The bridge at the Iron Works, 
The Orndorff bridge, 
Burnside's bridge on the battlefield, 
The Hitt bridge near Keedysville, 



42 Zhc Hntietam 

The bridge at Delemere, 

The bridge at Roxbury, 

The bridge at Emmert's mill, 

The bridge at Rose's mill, 

The two bridges at Funkstown, 

The bridge at Hager's mill, 

The bridge on the Cavetown turnpike, 

The bridge at Old Forge, 

The two bridges at Leitersburg. 

Chronologically they would be placed in different order. 
They were built as the demands of travel were greatest. 
The bridge at Funkstown, the first to be built, was on the 
through route to the West. It is a handsome bridge of 
three arches, standing high out of the water, with a look 
of dignity worthy of its purpose and history. 

The southern end of the county next required a bridge. 
Sharpsburg, where at an early date industries had been 
established, churches built, and a thriving settlement 
fostered, now asked for one. The contract for it was given 
to Silas Harry, the man who had built the bridge over the 
Conococheague on the western road. In view of the work 
done on that bridge, which is a fine one still in constant use, 
he should have done well with the smaller one. But for 
some reason the "bridge at Mumma's Mill," known later 
as the Orndorff bridge, did not stand the test of time. The 
piers weakened and began to settle before the high waters 
in the year of the Johnstown flood. During that season of 
excessive rain, floods prevailed all over the country, the 
Antietam was swelled far beyond its normal size, and 
the Orndorff bridge gave way. We have pictures of it, 



^be Xev^ Court 43 

showing a quaint structure, solid and thickset enough, one 
would think, to have withstood many floods and freshets. 

These two earliest bridges were ordered to be built in 
the same year. The bridge at Funkstown, which was spoken 
of in the records as the "bridge over the Antietam at or 
near John Shafer's Mill, on the public road past the Mill," 
was completed in 1823; the Orndorff bridge was finished a 
year later. The Commissioners were empowered to raise 
$1800.00 for each of these bridges by taxation, the collection 
of the sums to extend over a period of three years. The 
Justices of the Levy Court were to make three annual 
levies, but it was stipulated that they should not be re- 
quired to levy "unless upon such compromise or arrange- 
ment with the Boonsboro turnpike Company as they may in 
discretion deem just and proper." 

In 1824, the year in which the Orndorff bridge was com- 
pleted, the Lloyds built another bridge across the stream 
on the road to Leitersburg. This Leitersburg road was 
the main line of travel to Philadelphia, and was also a way 
of reaching Emmitsburg (the Catholic settlement in the 
mountains), and Taney Town and Westminster. It led 
the traveller through the Dutch country of the Dunkers 
and Mennonites, a fertile, cultivated stretch of wheat lands, 
hemp fields, and tobacco farms; a most interesting tract, 
one of the favorite haunts of the Indians, from whom it had 
been wrested with difficulty. 

So we see the two ends of the county, the neighborhood 
of the Potomac River, and the Pennsylvania line, first to 
follow the example of the Baltimore Turnpike Company, and 
have permanent stone bridges. 

After this, six years passed before any others were 



44 ^be Hntletam 

built. The Commissioners of the Levy Court must have 
stopped to take breath after spending so much money on 
pubHc improvements. To-day the cost of the bridges seems 
reasonably small. The one which was built by the Lloyds 
on the road to Leitersburg was erected at a cost of $2 1 7 5 .00. 

In 1830 another period of activity in bridge building 
began. An act was passed in 1829 authorizing the building 
of a stone bridge across the Antietam near Mr. Samuel Hitt's. 
We have the advertisement for sealed proposals for this 
bridge, with description, and dimensions. It was to have 
three arches, the centre one to be thirty-four feet span, the 
two outside ones twenty-six feet span. The piers and 
abutments were to be five feet high above low water mark 
to the spring of the arch, the width of the bridge sixteen 
feet in the clear. 

A good many improvements were being made at the 
same time in the neighborhood of Mr. Hitt's mill. Shortly 
after the bridge proposals were advertised for, there was 
another notice printed in the Hagerstown paper, calling 
for repairs to the road from the bridge over the Antietam 
near Samuel Hitt's to the summit of the hill toward Hesses 
mill; and also for making a road from the site of the old 
bridge near Hitt's to the same point. The road which 
crosses the stream here is the one connecting Keedysville 
and Sharpsburg, and it is also joined by a road coming 
down from the South Mountain by Crampton's Gap. 

The Hitt bridge was built by a man whose name we 
encounter for the first time, John Weaver. To one who 
studies the stone arches across the Antietam, the name of 
John Weaver calls up interesting and beautiful pictures. 
He was a man who, out of his rough and hard material, 



^be %cv^ Court 45 

wrought poems in stone. There is a charm in the propor- 
tion, a perfection in the detail, of John Weaver's bridges, 
which marks them out for special notice. The originality 
he shows in the turns of wing walls, the welding of bridge- 
way and roadway, gives a distinct character to all his work. 
It is plain to see that he was in love with it, and gave to it 
not only the mind of a practical man, but the heart of an 
enthusiast. No one could have made the series of bridges 
which he built along the stream, who had not the joy in his 
work that marks the artist, 

Silas Harry worked with him in the construction of the 
Hitt bridge, as is shown by the records of the Levy Court, 
which paid him the sum of $1413.66 as the agent of John 
Weaver, The place where they threw the bridge across the 
stream is interesting as the ford by which Braddock's army 
marched on its way to Williamsport, where he crossed the 
Potomac River. 

In the same year that the Hitt bridge was built, we find 
the proposals advertised for the building of a bridge on the 
Cavetown road. The dimensions for this bridge were given. 
It was to have two arches of thirty-six feet span each, and 
the piers and abutments, height and width, were to be the 
same as in the Hitt bridge. The curtain walls of each bridge 
were to be four and a half feet in height, and covered with 
seasoned plank. 

The order was signed by Frederick Dorsey, as President, 
It was a name to appear later on other bridges, and was not 
only one of the most familiar names in the county then, but 
is well remembered still. He was a country doctor of the 
old school, of calomel, quinine, and bleeding; a personality, 
loved, honored, and laughed at with the laughter that was a 



46 ZTbe Hntietam 

tribute. Anecdotes innumerable were told of him, which 
became legends in the course of time. Vehement, untiring, 
a bom physician whose practice took him over every road 
in the county, it might be said that he knew every foot of it, 
every stone and tree, every farmhouse and cabin; and there 
was no one better fitted to pass upon the need of road 
improvement than old Doctor Dorse y. 



chapter VI 

The County Commissioners 

IN 1830 the old Levy Court was abolished, and the work 
*■ of supervising and maintaining the county roads was 
carried on by the County Commissioners, as they were now 
called instead of "Commissioners of the Levy Court." 

They took up their duties vigorously, and within three 
years had as many bridges built across the Antietam. The 
first of these was the stone bridge near the mouth of the 
creek, at the old Iron Works below Sharpsburg. It is a 
large bridge of four arches, carrying the road from Sharps- 
burg to Harpers Ferry, and was built by John Weaver. 
Unfortunately he did not carry out the practice which he 
adopted later of putting a tablet upon the bridge, with his 
name and the date of its construction. At the same time 
that this bridge was bemg built, he had in hand the con- 
struction of a bridge across Beaver Creek at Hesses mill. In 
the same year George Weaver was building the second bridge 
at Funkstown, while Charles Wilson was replacing the old 
wooden bridge at Delemere with the present stone structure. 

An order was also given to build a bridge across the 
Antietam at Hagerstown. An uncommon parsimony was 
shown in this case, for with every incentive to place a 
bridge at this point which should be an honor to the town, 
the Commissioners hung fire, advertised for one of "stone 
or wood, " and finally gave the order for a wooden bridge. 

47 



48 Zhc antictam 

A wooden bridge was accordingly built, and the present 
stone one was not erected until seventeen years later. 

The bridge at the Iron Works was undertaken just after 
the new County Commissioners had examined into the 
condition of the road from Sharpsburg to Harpers Ferry. 
The Commissioners in charge of these improvements were 
John Grove, John Miller of J., and Daniel Piper. How 
quaintly sounds the old distinction, at one time so common 
in the South, "John of J." A noted character in San 
Francisco in early days was always spoken of as "James 
King of William, " leading to the childish belief, in one case, 
that he was of royal descent. Even to-day the custom 
survives to a certain extent through Maryland and Virginia. 

While John Weaver was occupied with the work at the 
Iron Works, an order was passed authorizing Charles 
Wilson to build a stone bridge at Booth's mill. It was to 
be twenty feet in width, and to cost $2700.00. Historic 
Delemere was to have its stone bridge in place of the wooden 
one with a roof, which had been kept up at such expense in 
the past. No doubt it had been one of those wooden tun- 
nels, such as can be found to-day throughout Pennsylvania, 
dark as a snow-shed in the Sierras, and hiding all the lovely 
water view from the traveller as he crosses the stream. 

The builder of this bridge appears only this once as a 
bridge-builder on the Antietam. His name, however, had 
been in the records of the Levy Court at the time that the 
Lloyds built the stone bridge over the Conococheague at 
Williamsport. In 1829, when the bridge at Williamsport 
was being built, Charles Wilson was paid several sums of 
money as the agent of the Lloyds. Under them he learned 
the best traditions of bridge building, for the bridge across 



^be County (Tommis^ionera 49 

the Conococheague at this point is unusually fine, and as 
beautiful as any of those across the sister stream. Looking 
down from the cliff in the village upon its distant arches, 
leading from shore to shore, one sees in imagination the 
robber knights of the Rhine crossing it with their spoils, 
its high arches and slender piers making one think invol- 
untarily of mediaeval days. 

The bridge at Delemere is one of the most satisfying of 
the series. It is well placed at the turn of the stream, well 
planned and carried out. It is worthy of its setting, and to 
be that much was required of it, for the surroundings at 
Delemere are romantically beautiful. The bridge was 
completed in 1833, and it is a pity that the builder did not 
mark it with his name. 

The other bridge built in this same year was the second 
bridge at Funkstown, spoken of in the records, as the first 
had been, as "The bridge at Shafer's Mill." It was built 
by George Weaver, who may have been a brother of the 
other builder of that name. It is almost within sight of the 
turnpike bridge built by the Lloyds, but does not suffer by 
comparison. It is a fine, workmanlike bridge, well built, 
well set in its place, and connected deftly with the rocky, 
rugged limestone bank upon which it abuts. It is marked 
with a tablet bearing the following inscription: 

Geo. Wever, 1833. 
Commissioners, 
J. Whitmer, Sr., Pres., 
D. Claggett R. Wasson 

H. Fiery S. U. Hitt 

J, Gelwicks a. Rentch. 



50 Jl\)c Hntietam 

It will be noticed that the name is here spelled Wever 
and not Weaver. In the records we constantly find it 
spelled either way, but the preponderance is in favor of the 
latter spelling, and so it has been used throughout for the 
sake of consistency. 

The County Commissioners in 1833 appointed a com- 
mittee for "viewing the site of a bridge over the Antietam 
on the Sharpsburg and Maple Swamp road. " After they 
had determined upon the most advantageous site, the 
contract for building was given to "John Wever, bridge- 
builder, to build the same of stone, with width 12 feet in the 
clear, for $2300.00. " 

This bridge is famous in history as Burnside's bridge, 
and was one of the most bloodily contested points in the 
battle of Antietam. "John Wever, bridge-builder," put 
into the construction of this bridge all his perfection of de- 
tail, all his instinct for proportion, and made of it a 
perfect gem. It is a small bridge of three arches, a modest 
but exquisite structure, making a picture for all time. No 
bridge across the Loire beside the old chateaux, no arches 
thrown across English streams, can outdo in beauty this 
little bridge of our own country. Compared with many of 
the same size by Tweed or Thames, across Dee or Indre, 
we find in the foreign work a certain clumsiness, a massive 
effect which this historic and lovely structure avoids. 

At the place where it crosses the Antietam the surround- 
ings are pastoral in character, there is no ruggedness of 
limestone banks, and no wildly romantic environment. It 
is a bit of sloping field and meadow, with hills rising on one 
side. The stream winds placidly between its buttonwoods 
and willows. In harmony with these surroundings stands 



^be County Commieeloners 51 

the rather narrow and simple bridge; yet so graceful are 
its gray arches, and so well wrought out its whole scheme 
of softly swelling abutments and gently rising wing walls, 
that all thought of detail is lost. The builder must have 
loved it, from the time that his imagination first projected 
it across the stream, and thought out its little individual 
touches, until he saw its graceful arches reflected in the calm 
water, giving the seal of man to the lonely landscape. 
Looking at its delicate curves, he might have remembered 
the first meaning of the word bridge, "a brow." It is 
so harmonious and beautiful that if this bridge alone had 
been built across the Antietam, we should have felt proud 
of the work of the men of the last century. 

In the three years following the building of Burnside's 
bridge, two more were thrown across the Antietam, the 
bridge at Rose's mill, and that beyond Leitersburg, on the 
country road near Strite's mill. 

They were both built by John Weaver, who had by this 
time proved himself a thoroughly competent bridge-builder. 
In 1838 we find in the records of the County Commissioners 
the proposals of John Weaver and William Grubb to build 
"a stone bridge across the Antietam at Sharer's Mill." 
This is now known as Rose's mill. Here we have a rather 
massive structure. The stream is wide, and the mill-dam 
placed almost against the piers of the bridge. The creek 
sometimes spreads at this point to a dangerous width, and 
here a man once saw his two sons drown at high water, 
and was powerless to help them. 

The mill was so near the end of this bridge that, with 
one of his practical touches, deftly used to make a feature 
in the bridge, John Weaver threw the wing wall at a right 



52 Zl)c Hn tie tarn 

angle, widened the floor of the bridge, and made a plat- 
form under the mill wall, so that wagons might drive under 
its upper door, and have their loads lifted straight from the 
bridge into the mill. There is a marble tablet set in this 
angle, with the following inscription : 

Washington County 

Permanent Bridge No. 15 

Built by John Weaver for 

The Commissioners, viz.: 

Jacob A. Grove, Prest. 

Andrew Rentch 

Michael Smith 

Horatio Harne 

Samuel Lyday 

James Cowdy 

Eli Crampton 

Robert Fowler 

John C. Dorsey 

June 24th, 1839. 

There is a great contrast between this bridge, part of a 
well travelled road, where the stream was wide, and which 
as an adjunct to a mill required a wide roadbed, and the 
little arches thrown across the stream where it was small 
and young, on the "dirt road" leading from Leitersburg 
among the country farms. 

In the very next year John Weaver submitted proposals 
for building a bridge at "Claggett's mill." This is now 
known as Emmert's mill, and is only a short distance from 
Rose's. It was built at a cost of $2800.00. This bridge 
is so much a part of its surroundings, and there is so much 



Zbc County (rommi00ioner0 53 

stone work in the neighborhood, that it is not as conspicu- 
ous as the others. The whole spot is full of interest, and 
is, collectively, one of the most delightful on the Antietam. 
Here we have, not only the stone bridge, but an immense 
old stone mill with hip roof, three stories high, and in a 
good state of preservation. Across the road from the mill, 
backed up against the hill, is a stone house of three stories, 
with galleries running across the upper stories. The mill- 
race is crossed by a stone bridge of one arch, so good that 
one thinks involuntarily of the master-builder, John Weaver; 
and the county records show that a year after he finished 
the bridge over the Antietam, he bridged the mill-race at 
Claggett's mill with a single arch. 

The bridge at Claggett's mill was completed in 1840. 
Eight years later the stone bridge which stands at the 
crossing of the Antietam just outside of Hagerstown was 
built. This is always spoken of as the bridge at Hager's 
mill. The original mill which stood at this spot antedated 
the milling days of the Hagers, however, and was always 
known in the oldest records of the county as Colonel Stull's 
mill. It was bought from him by the Hagers, and William 
Hager lived in the old brick house which stands across the 
road from the mill; a house which with its old trees, and 
low stone wall around the garden enclosure, looks much 
more like a relic of old times than the bridge or the 
mill. 

Fifteen years passed before the county records noted the 
building of another bridge across the Antietam, and in 
connection with it we find another set of names. In 1863 
a stone bridge was built at the Old Forge, where the Hughes 
brothers had their nail factory in Revolutionary times. The 



54 ^be antictam 

name of the builder was W. H. Eierly. There are two 
tablets on the bridge which read as follows: 

Built in 1863 

John Reichard, Prest. 

Dan'l Startzman 

Michael Newcomer 

Lancelot Jaques 

Wm. Roulette 

W. H. Eierly, Builder. 

Opposite this, on the other wing wall, is another tablet 
with this inscription: 

Rebuilt in 1893 

G. C. Snyder, Prest. 

Jacob Friend 

Wilfred R. Stouffer 

R. F. Stottlemeyer 

Alex W. Davis 

JosiAH Hill, Builder. 

We have traced the history of the Antietam valley from 
the time when it was an Indian hunting ground, until it 
became a valley of homes. Hardly won in the beginning, 
the courage and industry of the pioneers changed it from a 
wilderness to the rich pastoral country which we see now. 
The great obstacle to its development was the difficulty and 
danger of travel, which cut it off from intercourse with the 



CTbe County Commiseionere 55 

surrounding country. It was a problem which the early 
settlers had to face, and when good and safe roads were 
made, it seemed as though the life of the country were 
relieved from pressure, and sprang forward toward new 
prosperity and growth. 

In the stone bridges which their forefathers built, the 
people of the valley have inherited legacies which a more 
advanced state of knowledge has not taught them to improve 
upon ; and to preserve them for future generations must be 
a matter of pride. If we study the environment of each 
bridge, and the traditions of its neighborhood, we shall feel 
a still livelier interest in them, and a greater appreciation 
of what they did for the people of those days. 

List of the bridges chronologically arranged : 

1823. Funkstown turnpike bridge, 

1824. Leitersburg turnpike bridge, 
1824. Orndorff bridge, 

1830. Hitt bridge, 

1830. Cave town turnpike bridge, 

1832. Bridge at Iron Works, 

1833. Delemere bridge, 

1833. Second Funkstown bridge, 

1836. Burnside's bridge, 

■ 1839. Bridge at Rose's mill, 

1839. Leitersburg road bridge, 

1840. Bridge at Emmert's mill, 
1848. Bridge at Hager's mill, 
1863. Bridge at the Old Forge. 



s6 ITbe antictam 

SIR JOHN ST. CLAIR 

BUILDER OF THE FIRST ROAD ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS 



His name is lost save in a brook of water 
That darkly plunges down a forest glen, 

Like that lean army pioneered to slaughter 
Through lonely shades to horrible Duquesne : 
But in the road he hewed across the mountains, 

Where Braddock sleeps beneath his wagon wheels, 
A living brook goes on from Eastern fountains, 

No wars arrest, no killing frost congeals. 



His was the skiff that hardily descended 

The wild Potomac to the roaring falls, 
His were the floats the soldiery befriended 

To pass the torrent, under mountain walls. 

His were the bridges over the Opequan 
And the Antietam in the morn of time, 

Crossed by a multitude no man can reckon 
To sceneries and destinies sublime. 



Behind his axes formed the van of movement. 

His picks and shovels were the conquering swords; 

And in the rift of Hght he ope'd, Improvement 
Went single file, through hidden savage hordes, 
Until the pack mules with their bells were merry 

Where rolling drums in vain inspired the fight. 
And sheep and shepherds tarried by the ferry 

That drowned a host amidst the battle's fright. 



Z\)c Counti? Commi00ioncr6 S7 

High-mettled Scot! thine is no glory hollow: 

Shall we forget thee in our Westward Ho? — 
When thy canoe the laden barges follow 

And up thy path the steaming engines blow? 

No ! while the sky the Alleghany arches, 
The good road builder's name shall be revealed : 

Sir John St. Clair's victorious army marches 
Above the army lost on Braddock's field. 



Part II: The Bridges 



59 



Chapter VII 

Old Sharpsburg 

THE country at the mouth of the Antietam is rich in 
historical associations. One of the first settlements 
in the valley was made here. Sharpsburg, which lies near 
the Antietam, was only a year behind Hagerstown in its 
incorporation. It seems strange that neither town should 
have grown up actually on the banks of the stream, but 
kept away from it, leaving it outside the corporate limits. 

So, close to the Antietam, but not on it, we find Sharps- 
burg, known in song and story for the great events which 
marched by it for three days, through crowded hours. It 
is a town which has achieved its crown of age; for as we 
measure time not by years but by the pressure of living, 
these three days of Antietam outstripped years of peace, 
and forestalling time have given to Sharpsburg its place in 
history. 

The Sharpsburg of old is a subject to linger over, it 
was so characteristic of the days when English rule and 
English customs prevailed in the colonies. Its founder was 
an English gentleman named Joseph Chapline, who had the 
quality of leadership to a great degree, and was the ruling 
spirit of the community. He owned the land on which 
the town was laid out. The tract was called, "Absalom's 

6i 



62 ZTbe anttetam 

Forest," and was thickly covered with a growth of hazel- 
wood and chinquapin. Perhaps it was so called because 
the fate of Absalom would have overtaken any one who 
tried to ride through its thickets. 

The traditional witchery of the hazelwood should linger 
here. There is a little Irish song one thinks of when visiting 
Sharpsburg for the first time, beginning, 

I went into the hazelwood, 

Because a fire was in my head, 
And cut and peeled a hazel-rod. 

And put a berry on a thread. 

And when white moths were on the wing. 
And stars, like moths, were shining out, 
I dropped the berry in a stream, 
And caught a little silver trout. 

It tells how the fish turns into a laughing girl, with apple- 
blossoms in her hair, and how he follows her, 

Through hilly lands and hollow lands. 
To pluck till time and times are done, 

The silver apples of the moon. 
The golden apples of the sim. 

Even so the genius of Sharpsburg, evoked from the 
hazelwood, flits by "hilly lands and hollow lands," where 
the hill country crowds down, fold on fold, to the river. 

In the quaint fashion of the day Joseph Chapline called 
the tracts he acquired by different names. That on which 
the first bridge across the Antietam from its mouth stands, 
is "Little I thought it." It was the scene of the battle 
between the Catawbas and Delawares, and the words have 
something of a prophetic ring in the light of after events. 
"Little I thought it!" those Indians might have cried, if 



Qlb Sbarpeburg 63 

they could have seen their favorite hunting ground turned 
into the facsimile of an English dale, with villages and 
farms; and "Little I thought it!" the fox-hunting, sporting 
colonists might have said, if there had come to them a 
vision of white men in arms against each other, and the 
roar of battle along the Antietam. 

In the earliest days of the settlement of this region, the 
two brothers, Joseph and Moses Chapline, came to it from 
the North, where they had spent some little time after 
leaving England. Joseph Chapline was a lawyer by pro- 
fession, but when he settled down on the Lower Antietam 
Hundred, and acquired large grants of land, he led the life 
of a country gentleman. To his first grant, which consisted 
of the land for three miles around Sharpsburg, others were 
added, and there is a certain flickering light thrown on the 
character of the owner by the names he gave them. Some 
were sentimental, such as "Love in a Village," "Little 
Friendship," and "Contentment"; others were of a sporting 
nature, such as "Hunting Ground," and "Hunting the 
Hare " ; and there were the purely fanciful "Little I thought 
it, ""Bachelor's Delight,"and "Loss and Gain." 

Tradition says he had an imperious disposition, and 
was something of an autocrat. His marriage shows that 
he carried matters with a high hand if his will was crossed, 
for he eloped with his wife, who was the daughter of a 
Presbyterian minister living in Virginia. This Welshman 
must have been a stern gospeller, for each of his three 
daughters made a runaway marriage, one with Colonel 
Chapline, one with the founder of Chambersburg, and the 
third with a lawyer of prominence named Price. It is, 
therefore, perhaps not to Colonel Chapline's discredit that he 



64 Zhc antietam 

took his wife from her father in this way. It seems rather 
the irony of fate that the old minister, who forced his daugh- 
ters into such irregular conduct, should have gotten into 
trouble with his own church by juggling with the marriage 
laws of Virginia, in consequence of which he left it for the 
Church of England. 

When Joseph Chapline laid out the village of Sharps- 
burg, he gave the land for a church to be built in it. 
The deed was made to the Lutherans, with the considera- 
tion attached that he, his heirs and assigns, should receive 
the yearly payment of one pepper corn, if demanded on the 
9th day of July. There is a church in Chambersburg 
which is required to pay an annual tribute of a red rose, 
and the stipulation in the deed has led to the pretty custom 
of taking red roses to the church on the day when payment 
falls due. It would be interesting to know if it was Colonel 
Chapline's brother-in-law, Mr. Chambers, who gave the 
church lot for this consideration. That, at least, has led to 
a pretty custom, but Joseph Chapline must ask for a whimsi- 
cal pepper corn, to which no possible sentiment could attach. 

The old Lutheran church in Sharpsburg lasted until the 
time^of the Civil War, when it was so injured by shells that it 
had to be pulled down, and another church was built on a 
different piece of ground. 

His second gift of a church lot was to a German Reformed 
congregation. The Chaplines themselves were members of 
the Church of England, but there were many Germans in 
the settlement, making up the two congregations named, 
and a good many years passed before an Episcopal church 
was built. These Germans consisted mainly of skilled 
artisans, who were brought over from the old country. 



®lt> Sbarpsbura 65 

Among them were glass-blowers, brickmakers, potters, 
and millers; and they made a valuable addition to the 
settlement. 

In time an English clergyman came to the village, the 
Reverend Benjamin Allen, a man of gentle and lovable 
disposition. He established there the first Sunday-school 
that was held in the country, and in the beginning it was 
taught in the Lutheran church. The Germans were not 
very well pleased to have their building put to such uses, 
but the Sunday-school was extremely popular with the 
townspeople, and in time numbered one hundred and 
seventy scholars. There was a public examination held in 
the winter, which was quite an event in the village life. 

Joseph Chapline's daughters, Jane and Sarah, were warm 
friends of Mr. Allen, and helped him not only with the Sun- 
day-school but in all his good works. Besides the Sunday- 
school in town, they opened another at the little village of 
Antietam, which stood just across the stream from the 
Iron Works. The Chapline chariot often crossed the stream 
at this point, carrying the gentle Mr. Allen and the ladies 
Jane and Sarah Chapline on their errands of mercy. 

After Joseph Chapline's death his son gave the land 
for an Episcopal church building, and his wife, who was 
burdened with the name of Mary Ann Christian Abigail 
(Ferguson) Chapline, sent to England for a bell, which she 
presented to the church. For a very short time Mr. Allen 
was in charge, but not long after the church was finished 
he left Sharpsburg on a visit to England, and died at sea. 
He was buried between the country of his adoption and his 
native land. 

The Antietam Iron Works, spoken of as across the 



66 ^be Hntletam 

stream from Antietam village, was owned by Joseph Chap- 
line, and was in active operation before the Revolution. 
Iron ore was mined in the neighborhood on both sides of the 
river. Not far away, in West Virginia, were the Ore Banks, 
owned by Lord Fairfax, which have been worked, not 
continuously but with intervals of idleness, to this day. 
Cannon balls and shells were cast at the Antietam Iron 
Works for the Revolutionary War, and in times of peace it 
turned out such useful articles as nails and kettles, Dutch 
ovens, stoves, and skillets. At a later time, when Rumsey 
was making experiments with his first steamboat, some of 
the parts for it were cast here. 
/ When the French and Indian War broke out, Joseph 

Chapline left his home, and took command of Fort Frederick. 
In a house in Sharpsburg to-day a copy of his muster roll 
is preserved, with the names of his officers and men. Brown 
ink and careful handwriting bring back to us the days when 
the Indians were the problem of the times. To-day there 
are other problems to reckon with, but none that can arouse 
the fierce fighting spirit, the heart-sickening terror which 
the war-cry and the murderous trail of the red man wakened 
in the old days of Sharpsburg. 

Moses Chapline, whose log house with loopholes in 
the walls, built for defence, was a place of refuge for his 
neighbors, lived farther up the Antietam, on his tracts of 
"Bounded White Oak," and "Josiah's Bit." He had not 
the dominating personality of his brother, but was greatly 
respected, and made warm friends among gentle and simple. 
Both brothers entertained distinguished company on their 
estates. Generals Washington, Braddock, and Gates visited 
them; and the Governor of Maryland, General Horatio 



Qlb Sbarpebura 67 

Sharpe, was a great friend of Joseph Chapline, who named 
the town in his honor. 

When the country was at peace, there was much gayety 
and hospitality in the village and the country around. The 
Sharpsburg races drew a lively crowd. Purses of forty 
and sixty dollars were offered for three-mile and four-mile 
heats, and a handsome sweepstakes for two miles, so one 
may read in the old Hagerstown papers. Four horses must 
start each day at eleven o'clock a.m., or there was no race. 
The rule was strict for silk jackets and jockey caps, and 
horses must be entered on the day preceding the race, "or 
double at the post. Entrance one shilling in the pound." 

The good old sport of cock-fighting was as much in favor 
then as it is in the Philippines to-day. One of the anecdotes 
told of old Doctor Dorsey is, that he was met by a stranger 
from Virginia in the neighborhood of Sharpsburg, jogging 
along with a bag slung over his horse's neck, balanced by a 
jug in one end and a game-cock in the other. The contents 
of the jug was harmless, being no more than gruel which 
his wife had made for a sick woman. But the game-cock 
promised sport, for, said the old Doctor, "I 'm going to stop 
on my way back at Sharpsburg, to meet my friend Harrison 
of Martinsburg and have a round. And I shall certainly 
whip him," said he, "for I 've never had one of my brass- 
backs whipped in a fair fight yet. " 

A Hagerstown anecdote on cock-fighting can "lay over" 
this, as Br'er Rabbit would say. A distinguished citizen 
there tells, as one of his earliest recollections, that while 
still a little tacker in dresses and petticoats, he sat upon the 
knee of the second Doctor Dorsey, watching a chicken-fight 
with absorbed interest, in a quiet comer lot. Suddenly 



68 Zhc antietam 

he was handed over to a neighboring lap, while the Doctor 
sprang to his feet. 

"Here, hold this child," he cried, "while I go up to the 
vestry meeting and vote. If I don't that d — d Doctor 
McGill will get himself elected." And away he hurried to 
St. John's to save the situation, getting back in time to see 
the finish of his cock-fight. 

Fox-hunting was another favorite amusement. It some- 
times brought the hunters into trouble with the farmers, 
and advertisements were printed bidding "Fox Hunters, 
Beware, " and complaining of the damage done to the crops. 

The Belinda Springs near the town attracted people 
from the country round. They were considered at that 
time as good as the Bedford Springs, and attracted people 
from the North by their medicinal waters. The resort was 
so well patronized that at times companies of actors would 
come down to amuse the guests. A boat went up and down 
between the Springs and Harpers Ferry, carrying pleasure 
parties, and a cave near the Antietam, which was said to 
have been an Indian hiding place, was a favorite picnic 
ground. We smile over the magniloquent wording of old 
advertisements. What newspaper to-day would venture 
to assert of a resort that "a numerous assemblage of fashion 
and beauty, every morning, 

" skip o'er the mountain like the wanton fawn." 

Yet this was printed in all seriousness of some neighboring 
springs, which tried to rival the Belinda Springs in public 
favor. 

The Springs are now no more than a name. When the 
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was built, along the river, 



0si 




Qlb Sbarpeburo 69 

cholera broke out among the laborers with such severity 
that it caused a panic. The Springs were deserted by all 
the guests, and closed, never to be reopened. Many of the 
laborers who died of the epidemic were buried in a field- 
corner on the road between Sharpsburg and the Springs, 
and no doubt the sight of the crowded graves was enough 
to keep people from passing that way. 

Charming old Sharpsburg, with its sporting gallants, and 
its lovely women. Where gentlemen gathered the most 
distinguished guests around their mahogany; where the 
winters were spent in dancing and gaming, and the summers 
in visits to Springs and neighboring country houses; when 
parties of young men and girls visited about for a week at a 
time, waited on by admiring slaves who doted on the quality, 
and enjoyed the excitement and good living as much as did 
their masters. It was a mode of life which has passed 
away from Maryland; gay, kindly, and neighborly; just 
provincial enough to be intimate in the best sense of the 
word, yet with a touch of the dignity which distinguishes an 
aristocracy. Those who regret the good old days are 
always laughed at, yet there was really something in that 
time, the youth of Maryland, to make one echo the sigh of 
the poet, that 

When youth, the dream, departs, 
He takes something from our hearts, 
And it never comes again. 

One other bridge must be mentioned in connection with 
old Sharpsburg, the Orndorff bridge which crossed the 
Antietam a short distance outside the town on the road 
from Sharpsburg to Boonsboro. This was the second 



70 ZTbe Hntietam 

bridge built over the Antietam, the first to follow the build- 
ing of the turnpike bridge at Funkstown. Unfortunately, 
it no longer exists. At the time of the high waters, when 
the Johnstown disaster occurred, the piers of this bridge, 
which had already weakened, gave way, and the bridge was 
condemned and torn down. 

The oldest mill in the neighborhood was the Orndorff 
mill which stood just at the crossing of the stream. On a 
slight rise above the water on the Sharpsburg side, lived 
Major Orndorff, or Orendorff, a wealthy man and a person 
of distinction. It is said that he entertained all the officers 
of the Continental army who passed through the place. 
His house was built just forty years before the mill, and 
this in turn just forty before the bridge; things moving in 
Mosaic numbers on the calm banks of the Antietam. 

We have a picture of the old bridge, with two arches, 
and very much rounded abutments, and a pretty sweep 
of the wing walls as they joined the road. Over it, in the 
old print, passed a line of Conestoga wagons, with hoods 
like Shaker bonnets. A thriving trade was done at this 
mill, which had a fertile country to draw on. 

Major Orndorff was a man of note, when he lived at 
Sharpsburg, but fame clings to the memory of his two 
daughters, and makes the scene echo to the names of Rose 
and Mary. Mary Orndorff was a celebrated beauty, so be- 
witching that it was said no man could come within sight 
of her and not love her. When she was only fifteen, the 
handsome and affable General Gates met her on one day, 
and implored her to marry him on the next. There is a 
pretty story told of their meeting. 

Major Orndorff had twelve children, and Mary was one 



(S>l^ Sbarpebura 71 

of the youngest. In those days, children were kept in the 
background instead of being put forward as they are apt 
to be to-day. On one occasion, however, when General 
Gates was visiting his friend, the two gentlemen were 
standing in such a way that, themselves unseen, they saw 
the lovely "backfish " Mary pass through the hall. She had 
on a new cap from Hagerstown, of the latest fashion, and, 
anxious to see how it became her, she went into the parlor to 
study the effect in the pier glass. General Gates, who 
happened never to have seen her before, exclaimed, "Who 
is that lovely creature?" When he heard that she was 
Major Orndorff's youngest daughter, he begged that she 
might be at the tea table, so placed that he could see her. 
The opportunity completed his conquest, and the next day 
he was begging her to be his bride. The little beauty 
laughed at his elderly courtship, and was much amused at 
being made love to by her father's contemporary. Suitors 
she had a-plenty, and youth turning to youth, she married 
young Jonathan Hager, son of the founder of Hagerstown. 
It is, as Carlyle would say, "significant of much," that he 
married her on the day after he was accepted, too wise to 
risk a chance by waiting. So the lovely Mary Orndorff 
went to Hagerstown to live in a house in the Square, and 
was left a widow while still young and beautiful, and again 
had many suitors. . 

One of them was the distinguished lawyer, Luther Martin, 
who courted her vainly through several years. Some of 
his letters to her were preserved, and it is amusing and 
touching to read of his devotion. In one alone he calls 
her by all of these endearing terms: "My dearest Mrs. H.," 
"Best and most beloved of women," "My dear, my 



72 ^be antic tarn 

tenderly beloved," "My charming widow," "My best 
beloved, dearest Woman." He had begged that she send 
him an invitation to eat his Christmas dinner with her, but 
she would not give him so much encouragement. The 
letter quoted from is his reply to her cruel decision. But, 
like a gallant lover, he sent her a jug of choice madeira and 
asked, "On Xmas day at exactly J past 12, drink a glass 
of the wine to the health of your lover, and I will also drink 
a glass to the health and happiness of my mistress" ; ending 
with the words, "Bless with another dear letter, Your 
Martin. " 

Rose Orndorff was as celebrated in her way as her beauti- 
ful sister. She must have been a frail, delicate girl, for she 
was subject to cataleptic trances, and when in this condition 
was believed to have the gift of second sight. People 
thought she communicated with spirits, and crowds came 
from all the country round to see her. They consulted her 
about the future, and tried through her to get into com- 
munication with their loved ones, lost through death or 
separation. 

We can imagine many a widow, left to endure her hard 
life in loneliness, trying through Rose Orndorff to get a 
message from the other world. Or parents whose child 
had disappeared after the passing of a band of Indians, 
distracted with grief, would seek through her a clue by 
which to follow after the little one. In these days, when a 
vast machinery is set in motion, and the most eager interest 
is awakened in every State for the recovery of a kidnapped 
child, it is sad to think of the hopelessness of their search. 
The blue-eyed girl, the rosy-cheeked boy, passed into the 
silence of the wilderness, to lose his identity in that of the 



®lb Sbarpsbura 73 

race which carried him away. The Antietam has reflected 
many of these Httle ones, wading in its shallows, fishing in 
its pools, their faces browned by exposure to the hue of 
the race that carried them captive. It is told by a gentle- 
men in Hagerstown to-day, that for years, whenever a 
tribe of Indians came through the town, his father would 
visit the camp with presents, in the faint hope that a long 
lost sister might be found among them. Every woman's 
face would be carefully scanned to see if some trait might 
connect her with the lost child ; but though once or twice some 
face seemed to indicate an alien race, it would be so browned 
by exposure, and so moulded by life with the savages, 
that it was impossible to hope that she had been found. 

So Rose Orndorff exercised her strange gift for the help 
of people who came to her with their troubles. We have 
the testimony of papers of that day that people came in 
crowds to consult the young girl, — "Sta. Rosa Vitoza, " as 
she was fancifully called. In her cataleptic state she was 
insensible to pain, and curiosity of a more common order 
moved many of her guests to stick pins into the uncon- 
scious Rose, to see if she would wince. Finally some of her 
family or friends were obliged to stay in the room, when 
she had visitors, to protect her from these experiments. 

After the marriage of his daughter Mary, Major Orn- 
dorff moved to Kentucky with Rose. Beside the constant 
fever for the West that fired men's blood, he may have been 
moved by the wish to escape from the annoyances caused 
by his daughter's notoriety. But she made him promise 
that if she died there, he would bring her back to Sharps- 
burg to be buried, and he kept his word and laid her to rest 
near the Antietam. 



Chapter VIII 

The Lower Antietam and Burnside's Bridge 

THE largest of the bridges over the Antietam is that 
which is situated at the mouth of the stream, a short 
distance from the spot where it empties into the Potomac 
River. At this point the Antietam is crossed by the road 
from Sharpsburg to Harpers Ferry. At the time of the 
battle of Antietam, the troops which came up from Harpers 
Ferry to reinforce General Lee passed over this bridge, and 
after the battle a part of the Southern forces retreated along 
the same road. 

It is the only bridge of the series which has four arches, 
and is a fine structure, picturesquely situated where the 
stream is wide, and flows over a rocky bed. The little 
village called "Antietam" on its northern bank, the home 
of the laborers employed at the Iron Works, is as old as 
Sharpsburg itself. 

The three bridges standing within a short distance of 
each other from the mouth of the creek were seen for the 
first time on a June evening when the flowers of spring made 
the country beautiful. The wheat fields were a vivid green, 
and the forest trees clothed with fresh verdure. The coun- 
try between Sharpsburg and the Potomac River, through 
which one drives to reach the Antietam bridge, is a succes- 

74 



tHower antietam anb Burn0i^e'0 Brlbge 75 

sion of rolling hills, which as the river is neared become 
steeper and more crowded, like the foot-hills of the Cali- 
fornia coast ranges. In one place the mountains break, and 
one looks back through the opening to range on range, 
growing fainter in the distance. Among these crowded hills 
are farmhouses built on slopes, surrounded by stone walls. 
The houses themselves are of gray limestone, with great 
barns and clustering out-houses. Little paths lead through 
pasture bars down steep hillsides, and places which the 
plough cannot reach are lit up with pink redbud, and dog- 
wood's snow. There is something Japanese in the character 
of both of these, in the knotted boughs of the one, and the 
horizontal planes of the other. Here and there on rock 
breaks in hilly fields, dark cedars throw out in high relief 
their peach-like blossoms, and sheets of snow. 

The country between Sharpsburg and the river, with 
its "hilly lands and hollow lands," with its untamable 
bits, and old, old homesteads, is too full of sad memories. 
Those stone houses and barns were used as hospitals during 
the battle. Behind these walls along the roadside, the 
soldiers lay and fired through long hours before they were 
driven from their position. 

The road passes a field-comer marked off with trees. 
This is where the Irish dead were buried at the time of the 
cholera epidemic. So many laborers on the canal died, 
that the authorities became alarmed, and forbade their 
burial in Hagerstown or Sharpsburg. So a priest came 
from the former town and consecrated this field-corner 
and here were laid five hundred dead. It seems incredible 
that such a small space should be so thickly peopled. But 
one is told that the farmers, ploughing the fields for their 



76 Zbc antietam 

crops, gradually lost their reverence for the spot by too much 
familiarity, and have encroached upon it by degrees. In 
any case, the bones of the dead must lie thick in this comer. 

Many and many a son of Con, the Hundred-fighter, 

In the red earth lies at rest. 
Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers. 

(We may not add, "Many a swan- white breast.") 

At the mouth of the creek is a scene of great beauty. 
That soft haze which seems to linger over the Potomac in 
every season clothes its banks with mysterious loveli- 
ness, and gives a dreamy indistinctness to the distant 
reaches of water. The Antietam runs merrily over its 
rocky bed, for once hurried out of its slow meandering, as 
if in haste to join the river. A sunset sky, and the faint 
purple tones of evening, give color to the landscape. Great 
buttonwoods lean out over the creek, and elms in full leaf 
stand along the river banks. Wild violets make splashes 
of blue along the fences, and the stems of the papaw are 
set with its curious flowers. At this stage, not yet matured, 
they are a vivid arsenic green, with calyx of brown velvet. 
The flower turns purple when it comes to maturity, but 
now its kinship to the poisonous families of plants is shown 
by its strange green coloring. 

An aqueduct carries the waters of the canal across the 
creek mouth, and just here is the old Indian battle-ground. 
One is told that if he so much as scratches the ground, 
arrowheads and bones can be uncovered. 

A few yards up the stream stands the large bridge of four 
arches. There is no tablet to tell that it was built in 1832, 
by John Weaver. The water brawls beneath the bridge, over 
the stones, making a pleasant sound. On the opposite bank 



Xowcr antietam an^ Burneibe's Bridge 77 

are the ruins of the Antietam Iron Works, half hidden by 
trees, and lying at the foot of a steep, wooded hill. 

On the Sharpsburg side of the stream is the old village 
of Antietam. In its decay, it has that look of paralysis 
that is so melancholy in places where human beings still 
make their homes. The houses rise steeply up the stony 
hill. A high retaining wall above the road is draped with a 
drooping vine called "wild jessamine" in this part of the 
country. Great mulleins grow between the stones of the 
wall, spreading out fiat, woolly rosettes. And in the comer 
of a yard is a great clump of white and purple lilacs, in full 
bravery of bloom and fragrance, as it is the mission of 
flowers to redeem the dreariest places with their immortal 
beauty. 

This is the village where the Chapline sisters came with 
Mr. Allen each Sunday to hold Sunday-school. Then it was 
a thrifty place. Now the only evidence of energetic life 
about it is in the swarms of children, who seem to multiply 
in every part of Maryland, even under the most untoward 
circumstances. 

A memory attaches to this spot. On the morning of the 
1 6th of October, 1859, a man employed at the Iron Works 
saw a stranger going past on the tow-path. He noted the 
tall figure and singular face, with no thought beyond an 
idle curiosity. The next day the news of John Brown's raid 
startled the whole country. His house in the mountain was 
searched for information about the conspiracy, and among 
the searchers was the man from the Iron Works. In a 
picture which was found of one of John Brown's sons, he 
was able to identify the traveller who had passed so early 
along the tow-path. A sinister figure was this that haunted 



78 ^be Hntietam 

the Maryland hills; the old man, with the manners and 
appearance of a patriarch, coming to his work stained with 
the blood of women and children, and at heart what would 
be called in the West, simply a ' ' Bad Man. " 

The drive back from the old bridge to Sharpsburg was 
taken over the road which goes through the battlefield. 
Along this road are many monuments. On some of them, 
young men with eager faces lean forw-ard to scan the field. 
They call up too poignantly the many high-spirited youths 
who died here. It is a melancholy sight, and gives rise to 
uncanny thoughts. For if the dead along the Antietam 
should rise, what numbers, of what various nations, would 
be here! Indian warriors, painted and feathered; red 
Irishmen and blue-eyed, black-haired Celts; young Ameri- 
cans, descendants of the Cavaliers, and men of the North; 
mercenaries of all nations, and black Africans with rolling 
eyes. Perhaps people living here and accustomed to these 
surroundings are as little affected by them as we would be on 
visiting the pyramids; but one would think the ploughman 
turning up bones and bullets in his furrows would be too 
sharply reminded of the shortness of human life, and of the 
tragedies which took place on this ground. 

'■ Burnside's bridge, the most famous of the bridges over 
the Antietam, is a small bridge of three arches; but so perfect 
in its proportions and so satisfying in its lines, that it is 
perhaps the most delightful of the series. Its narrow road- 
way leads from the lea of a steep hillside, on one bank, to 
a low meadow on the other. Water- willows, like silvery 
clouds, follow the bend of the stream, and sycamores with 
dappled trunks and broad leaves lean over the water. 
Against the middle arch of the bridge a young sapling 



Xower antietam anb Burnsibe's Brtbge 79 

springs, and between the arches spreads a fan-hke growth 
of beautiful green. But this decorative vine turns out to be 
the poisonous ivy, too dangerous to touch, and is symboHcal 
of the history of the bridge, too bitter to be closely looked 
into. 

Below, the Antietam wanders slowly, the embodiment of 
peace, never more calm in all its unruffled wanderings. The 
trees are reflected in its mirror-like surface, doubly beautiful 
as they rise above it or dip into the stream. Wild roses 
peep from the thickets, vervain and daisies and deep blue 
thistles grow along the banks. The scene suggests no more 
arduous pursuits than following the fishes up their cool 
retreats, or spilling the purple juice of blackberries. 

The monuments of the battlefield are out of sight, from 
this place beneath the hill. ' There is nothing to remind the 
visitor of the battle except the two tablets at the end of the 
bridge with the names of men who fell during the fight, and 
on a distant hill slope something can be seen which looks 
like a low headstone, half hidden by evergreens. This very 
aloofness and seclusion, when one comes to know the story 
of the bridge, makes it seem all the more violent and 
shocking. 

We must try to picture the scene briefly. It was Sep- 
tember, and the fertile Sharpsburg country w^as in full 
autumn beauty. The fields were yellow with stubble, the 
corn was ripening, and the grapes in the farmhouse gardens 
turning purple. The Southern army had come down from 
the battle of South Mountain,' fought at the two gaps, 
Turner's Gap where the Dahlgren stone house and chapel 
stand on either side of the road, and Crampton's Gap where 
now the War Correspondents' Monument stands and looks 



8o ^bc antietam 

out over two valleys on one of the most beautiful views of 
Maryland. Hundreds of these soldiers had marched down 
the road from Keedysville, crossing and recrossing the Antie- 
tam by bridge and ford, and wading it waist deep. \ This 
army, first to arrive, encamped about Sharpsburg. 

Next came the Federal troops, and we have a picture of 
their coming described by General Longstreet. He says 
they began to appear over the crest of the hill which over- 
looks the Antietam creek from the east. "The number 
increased, and larger and larger grew the field of blue until 
it seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see ; and from the 
tops of the mountains down to the edges of the stream gath- 
ered the great army of McClellan, ninety thousand strong. 
It was an awe-inspiring spectacle, as this grand force settled 
down in sight of the Confederates." 

I 'Now on either side of the Antietam the armies were en- 
camped, ready for the battle which was to rage for three 
days. During that time there were certain points where the 
fighting focused, which it became of supreme importance 
to take and to defend, at the cost of no matter how much 
life and blood. One of these was the bridge at the crossing 
of the Maple Swamp road. In the reports of the Generals 
on the field, we find the simplest and most concise accounts 
of the taking of the bridge. General Burnside reports on 
the morning of the 17th: 

"I received an order from the General commanding to 
make my dispositions to carry the stone bridge over the 
Antietam, nearly opposite our centre. -i^The disposition of 
the troops at this time was as follows: General Crook's 
Brigade, and General Sturgis' Division immediately in 
front of the bridge and the ford. The nth Connecticut 



Xowcr antietam an^ Burnei^e'e Bridge Si 

thrown out as skirmishers (Col. Kingsbury), General Rod- 
man's Division with Scammon's Brigade in support three- 
quarters of a mile below the bridge, and General Wilcox 
and General Benjamin's battery in the rear. '' Detailed 
General Crook's Brigade to make the assault, and General 
Rodman was directed to cross over at the ford below the 
bridge and join on to the left of the command which was to 
be thrown over the bridge." (This was at ten o'clock in 
the morning). "They were driven back. He then com- 
manded the batteries on the left to concentrate their fire 
on the woods above the bridge at all hazards. At one o'clock 
they commenced their charge and carried the bridge at the 
point of the bayonet. Our loss at this place was fearful.^ 

y^ General Sturgis's report says: "I now received orders 
from General Burnside to move still farther to the left and 
front, and across Antietam Bridge. The bridge was strongly 
defended by the enemy, and the approaches to it were ex- 
posed to a murderous fire from behind breastworks. The 
importance of carrying it without delay was impressed upon 
me by General Burnside. I went in person to the vicinity of 
the bridge and ordered the 2nd Maryland, Colonel Duryea, 
and Colonel Griffin, 6th New Hampshire, to move over at 
a double-quick and with bayonets fixed. They made a 
handsome effort to execute this order, but the fire was so 
heavy on them before they could reach the bridge that 
they were forced to give way, and fell back. " 

Again General Sturgis reports: "Orders arrived from 
General Burnside to carry the bridge at all hazards. I then 
selected the 51st Pennsylvania and the 51st New York. 
They started on their mission of death full of enthusiasm, 
and taking a route less exposed than the regiments which 



82 Zbc Hntletam 

had made the effort before, rushed at a double-quick over 
the slope leading to the bridge, and over the bridge itself 
with an impetuosity which the enemy could not resist, and 
the Stars and Stripes were planted on the opposite bank 
at one o'clock p.m., amid the most enthusiastic cheering 
from every part of the field from where they could be seen. " 

The last word was from General Burnside, who says, 
* ' Receiving an order from the commanding General to hold 
the bridge, and the heights above at any cost, this position 
was maintained until the enemy retreated on the morning of 
the 19th." 

It is interesting to note that the rage of battle spent 
itself most fiercely about two objects peculiarly characteris- 
tic of the Antietam country, the old stone bridge, and the 
Dunker church. |\ 

A trip to the lower Antietam would have been incomplete 
without a visit to the site of the Orndorff bridge. The ruins 
of the mill are on the bank of the creek, low down by the 
water. Having been told that there was a tablet in the 
wall of the mill with the date of building, it was carefully 
searched for ; but even at the cost of wading through beds of 
nettles which bristled in defence at the foot of the old stones, 
and creeping around where the creek bank shelved away, 
no such tablet could be found on any side of the ruins. As 
it was said to have been there two years before, some indigna- 
tion was felt at the vandalism which could tear down old 
ruins to make a barnyard wall, and even take an "original 
document" to build, perhaps, into the home of the numerous 
little pigs that went squealing about the neighborhood. 
However, on turning to leave the place, the stone was dis- 
covered lying on the ground and almost covered by weeds. 



A 



Xowcr antietam anb Burn0tt>e'0 Brlbgc 83 

The inscription was made out with some difficulty, and 
was as follows: 

A. Q. 1782 Sep. 5. 
C. O. M. O. 

The beginning was without doubt meant for A.D., but the 
man who cut the letters made some curious mistake. The 
numbers of the date were carefully carved on the stone, 
each one decorated with a dot in the centre, but the initials 
which stand for Christian and Mary Orndorff were much 
more rudely cut, and must have been done by a different 
hand. 

At a short distance from the mill is the iron bridge. One 
sees with regret the chain of stone bridges broken by this 
ugly modern interloper. The stone bridge, built here by 
Silas Harry, used to be known as "The Middle Bridge," 
though it would be hard to say now what it was "middle" 
to, or midway between. The old names cling long after 
they have lost their real significance, and one can still hear 
the bridge on the Cavetown turnpike spoken of as "The 
New Bridge," though it was built in 183 1. Like the man 
in the Bab Ballads, of whom it was sung, * * They called him 
Peter, people said, because it was his name, " so undoubtedly 
the New Bridge once was new, and the Middle Bridge a 
landmark between two points. 

On either side of the water are the ruins of the stone 
walls, and hitched to them, as ungainly as a cow to a carriage, 
is the ugly iron bridge. It bears the inevitable tablet, tell- 
ing of the passage of the troops over the stone bridge which 
stood here at the time of the battle. The country about 
Sharpsburg is thickly sown with these historical tablets, 



84 Zhc Hntietam 

and one cannot go in any direction without being reminded 
of the fight. 

It was interesting to hear two old residents of the county- 
speaking of the Orndorff bridge, and of the present iron one. 
They remembered the Middle Bridge well, and said that the 
foundations were not well laid. The piers began to sink, 
and gradually from having been a bridge with a good rise 
in the middle, it became quite level. Then came the famous 
forty days of rain, always spoken of in Maryland as "the 
Johnstown flood," as if the waters of that far-away Pennsyl- 
vania town came down bodily to swell the streams of the 
Hagerstown valley. All the creeks were swollen beyond 
their usual size, the Antietam rose, and the pressure on the 
weakened piers became so great that the bridge was con- 
demned and torn down, to make way for this utilitarian and 
unsightly structure. 

Discussing the relative merits of the stone and iron 
bridge, these gentlemen said that the idea of economy was 
a mistaken one, and instanced one in their neighborhood. A 
proposal was made to build a stone bridge for five thousand 
dollars, but the Commissioners though best to have a 
cheaper one of iron. This had to be constantly repaired, and 
a few years after it was built, it was partly replaced at a cost 
of fifteen hundred dollars beyond the original sum spent on 
it; while a stone bridge, more expensive in the first place, 
would have lasted practically forever, with very slight cost 
for repairs. Indeed one never hears the iron bridges well 
spoken of by the country people who have to drive over them. 
They complain of the disagreeable vibration felt in crossing, 
and say they are always glad to be safely over them. 

Going back to Sharpsburg for supper, one realized how 



Xower antietam ant) Burn6tt)e'0 Bri^^e 85 

typical it was of the old Maryland villages, with its leafy 
streets and mellow houses. Some of these are of stone, 
thick-walled and gray ; others of warm brick showing cosily 
behind the fresh green of the trees. Lilacs and roses were 
blooming in profusion, making the air fragrant. Bits of 
lawn, and creepers softened the outlines of the somewhat 
severe dwellings. Here an arched doorway would give a 
house distinction ; or a square porch with colonial pillars, and 
settles built in on either side, invited to gossip in the summer 
evenings. 

There is a charm about these quiet places, far from noisy 
factories and the rush of traffic. But the feeling they 
awaken is something like that which Emerson expressed 
toward the storied beauty of cathedrals and their priests, 

Not for all my faith could see. 
Would I that cowled churchman be. 
Why should the vest on him allure 
Which I could not on me endure? 

The quaint old villages fascinate us with their repose, but 
we must go back a hundred years in spirit to fit into their 
life again. 

Supper was taken at the hotel, an old square house with 
wide, arched doorway set with fanlights, and large airy 
hall running through the middle of it. Around the walls 
was an old-fashioned chair-rail, and the spacious dining- 
room with its high ceiling was a survival of the old style of 
Maryland home. It was inevitable that General Lee 
should have held a council of war in its parlor, and that 
memories of that great hero should have pervaded the last 
hours of this day at Sharpsburg. 



chapter IX 

Keedysville and the Hitt Bridge 

BETWEEN Sharpsburg and Keedysville is a hill country 
where the mountains advance and retreat. Seen on 
an autumn day of mist and weeping showers, they seem to 
withdraw at times to infinite distances. The trees along 
the creek are like phantoms half veiled in a pale blue haze. 
They shimmer through the mist, pure gold of buttonwood, 
red-gold of sassafras, scarlet-red of maple, and russet oaks. 
Here one all pale yellow cheats one with the illusion of a 
gleam of sunshine. Under them the slow water, opaque 
and green as jade, slides without a sound. In the dim light 
evergreens stand like emblems of mourning and when 
across their gloomy deeps of color the wild grape throws its 
wreaths of scarlet, and the Virginia creeper its crimson 
sprays, we have a picture of fire and charred embers, in all 
the melancholy beauty of autumn. 

There are many old stone houses on the farms; and log 
cabins with tiny yards have the unmistakable look of 
mountaineers' homes, with the forest coming down to the 
back door. In this region lived Moses Chapline, and near 
Keedysville is the Red Hill, of Indian memory. 

At a certain point along the road, across a ravine, is a 

86 



1kect))?0\)illc an^ tbe "foitt Bridge 87 

little cabin with flat roof and windows high up in the wall, 
looking more like the living end of a canal boat than a dwel- 
ling. It is smartly painted white with red trimmings, and 
hanging boldly out on the side is a sign, "The Halfway 
Spider." The individual who tenants this shell, like the snail, 
moves with his house on his back. The whitewashed boards 
of the lower part conceal the wheels of a wagon, which is the 
Spider's dwelling. Curious must be the nature of this man, 
who lives on wheels, moving about a circumscribed route 
in this district. Without too apparent means of livelihood, 
the Spider weaves his way about from farm to farm, and is 
cautiously spoken of by his acquaintances. Curious too is 
the fact that the father of this roving character lived in 
much the same way, and gave himself the name of "Spider, " 
which his son has continued. It leads to speculations as to 
possible gipsy blood, which would stir for the open and 
irregular ways of supporting life, such as these two Spiders, 
father and son, have chosen. 

At Keedysville the limestone is more in evidence than in 
any other locality. It crops up everwhere through the soil, 
and is used for barns, houses, and walls. In the village the 
sidewalks are made of big flagstones, and along one of these 
walks a dainty sight was seen. Between the cracks and 
crevices of the low retaining wall, for quite a distance up 
the street, was a continuous growth of small ferns and 
Kenilworth ivy, an exquisite bit of greenery, springing 
spontaneously in the village street. 

Retaining walls hold up the yards above the street, 
and quaint stone steps lead up to perched gardens. Flagged 
paths wander in curves and angles up the sloping yards, 
around to back doors. Stone spring houses and bake ovens. 



88 ^be antietam 

with low walls and hipped or conical roofs, are common, and 
it is delightful to see such solid bits of masonry for the 
little uses of daily life. In one place a heavy stone chimney 
built outside the house has two projections, jutting out on 
either side, to hold an iron bar, from which kettles can be 
swung for outdoor cooking. 

Near the edge of the village is a small stone house, strong 
and thick walled. Under the eaves a tablet bears the in- 
scription, 

"Built by John Weaver, 
June ist, 1835." 

Below it is a window shaped like a slice of melon, and 
then the door and windows of the lower story. Iron braces 
are in the wall near the door. In the early days of Keedys- 
ville this was used as a schoolhouse, and after passing 
through various uses, as Sunday-school, and church, it is now 
a dwelling. The hills fall away behind it, so that from the 
back there is a wide outlook. And next to living the simple 
life after the manner of the Halfway Spider, one might 
imagine it in this tiny stronghold, backed by space, looking 
on the village street before and over the wide reaches of 
valley and stream behind. 

The road to the Hitt bridge follows the windings of the 
Little Antietam through the hills. The steep hill slopes are 
thickly wooded with pines and cedars, elms, locusts, mul- 
berries and sycamores, hazel bushes and papaws. Between 
are great outcropping masses of limestone, of a fine gray, 
mossed with delicate greens, or hung with creepers. Here 
and there the road is protected by stone walls, where it is 
most narrow and winding. In a lonely place above the 
creek is a limekiln, on the edge of the dark wood. These 



1keeb^6PiUe anb tbe Ibitt Bribge 89 

limekilns stand in lonely places, and one can understand 
how they would appeal to the sombre imagination of 
Hawthorne, and inspire one of his most gloomy tales. 

Along this shaded road a human flower danced into view, 
so sweet that it lighted up the solitary way, A wagon 
turned aside for us, driven by a boy in blue jeans, with a 
shock of corn-colored hair; and perched on the seat beside 
him was a girl of twelve, dainty as a little queen, with 
white dress and snowy starched and embroidered bonnet, 
her starry eyes full of laughter, and her cheeks like wild roses. 
It was the vision of a moment, seen and passed, but so 
charming that it was like an event in the drive. 

The Hitt bridge is a fine one, standing in a lonely spot, 
and seems rather to waste its charm there. It has one 
unusual feature, the middle arch is decidedly higher than 
the others, and this gives it an interesting character. A 
steep road comes to it, straight down the hill, once more 
Braddock's road, very characteristic in this spot; not reach- 
ing the stream by a winding and easy descent, but plunging 
down, uncompromising and inconvenient. It is not much 
used now that the bridge can be approached by an easier 
grade. Here there was one of those natural fords, first used 
by deer and bear, afterwards by Indians, and later by the 
white settlers. A Maryland author has celebrated these 
earliest river crossings in his poem, "The Packhorse Ford. " 

The wild crane stalked the ford for pike, and stood a guide- 
post man to guide : 

The river in more shallow tones expressed the shallows it might 
hide. 

So when the hunted outlaw came, he saw the trodden ramparts 
slant, 



90 Zhc antietam 

The trail go down and reappear, like ends of rainbow consonant. 
He told the peltry hunter where to guide the woods-lost 
emigrant." 

The bill for erecting a bridge near Mr. Samuel Hitt's 
farm passed both houses of the Legislature in 1829, and 
in 1832 this beautiful stone bridge was finished. There 
was in the neighborhood a mill, known as the Hitt mill. 
It was partly destroyed once by fire, and now only the 
lower story of the present mill remains of the original 
structure. 

The family which gives its name to the Hitt bridge 
is one whose history brings us in contact with one of the 
most interesting phases of life in the early days of Maryland, 
for the three brothers, Martin, Daniel, and Samuel Hitt, were 
of that brave company, the circuit riders of the Methodist 
Church. 

The Hitt family was of German origin, and settled in 
Virginia, but the cords which drew the brothers to this 
spot by the Antietam were those of love. There is still 
standing along the stream an old stone house where lived 
three sisters, Margaret, Ann, and Sarah Smith, who were 
loved by the three brothers. In a graveyard on the hill 
beside the house lies buried Daniel Hitt, who was called 
"the friend of Bishops," a distinguished minister, and the 
loved companion of Bishop Asbury. 

Maryland held a prominent place in the early history of 
the Methodist Church in America. One of the first Metho- 
dist preachers on the continent was Robert Strawbridge, 
who built a log church in Frederick County. When the 
New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Virginia circuits 
had but one minister to travel over each, Maryland had 



Ikeebi^sviUe ant) tbe Ibltt Bridge 91 

four ; and Baltimore early had its little Methodist church in 
Lovely Lane. 

The fundamental principle of the Methodist Church was 
personal religion, the direct accountability of man to his 
Maker. It found congenial soil in this new country, where 
men held the same attitude toward temporal power. Hav- 
ing broken with the old conventions in the political world, 
they were ready for the strong personal note in religion. 
Having, from the circumstances in which they lived, fallen 
into religious indifference, they needed a powerful influence 
to drag them back. The circuit riders might have been 
called hunters of souls. With tireless zeal they travelled 
through the country, doing their best to rescue men from 
the ignorance, and often the degradation, which was the 
result of their isolated lives on the frontier. They fought 
against the evils of drink, which had a strong hold on men 
who led outdoor lives, in places where whiskey was cheap 
and easy to get; and they fought as hard against slavery, 
which they believed to be not only morally wrong, but an 
economic evil to the country which supported it. 

Into the rude lives of the mountaineers, through the 
forests and plains of the West, rode the circuit preachers of 
the Methodist faith, bringing with them the Bible and hymn- 
book, and leaving them for the people to study. In this 
way, not only religion, but the noblest English, and the 
wonderful histories of old times, were brought to families 
whose lives had been barren of any such influences. From 
the forests of Maine to the pine hills of the Carolinas they 
journeyed, doing incalculable good. They won the respect 
of the frontiersmen by the spirit and courage with which 
they endured persecution. They were stoned and beaten, 



92 ^be Entictam 

torn from their horses, kicked and abused, imprisoned 
and cursed ; but they dragged their sore bones into the saddle 
again, and sang hymns as they rode through the wilderness; 
and in the end they won their enemies to a hearing. 

In 1 77 1 Francis Asbury came to America. He was the 
son of an English gardener, and like St. Francis he loved 
out-of-door things, and little children. He crossed the 
ocean with his Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and a few works 
on religion. To him might have been said what John 
Wesley wrote to another preacher who was setting out for 
our shores: 

"I let you loose, George, on the great continent of Amer- 
ica. Preach your message in the open face of the sun, and 
do all the good you can." 

Francis Asbury, following the hard road of the Methodist 
preacher, rose to the highest honors, and a dear friend of his 
was Daniel Hitt. 

We have a description of Daniel Hitt at this time. He 
was tall, and courteous in manner. His eyes were blue, and 
his long fair hair lay on his shoulders. His mind was calm 
and clear, and he was very neat in his dress. It is a 
pleasant picture of the earnest and intellectual preacher, 
who roughed it with the most rugged of the circuit riders. 

His pastorate extended over Virginia, Maryland, and 
Pennsylvania. He travelled from Baltimore to Pittsburg, 
Redstone, Clarksburg, and Frederick, and knowing as we 
do the condition of roads in those days, we can appreciate 
the fatigue of such journeys. In 1807 he was chosen to ac- 
company Bishop Asbury on his tour, and during this one 
trip they travelled five thousand miles, from Maine to the 
•Carolinas, and through the Alleghanies, following Brad- 



Ikceb^svUlc an^ tbe Ibitt Bridge 93 

dock's trail. During this long and toilsome journey, they 
worked together compiling the new hymn-book, which was 
to be printed and distributed through America. Many 
a long hour in the saddle was beguiled by this work, so 
congenial to the two studious minds. 

Bishop Asbury loved Hitt, and when they were apart he 
wrote him many letters, which the younger man copied into a 
book, and in this way they have been preserved to the 
Methodist Church of to-day. The affections of the two were 
firmly knit by this journey, and when it was over Hitt was 
sent to New York to be the assistant editor of the Book 
Concern there, no doubt superintending the printing of those 
hymns which he and Bishop Asbury had worked over 
together. After spending several years in New York, he 
went back to his work of preaching over a large area of 
country. Once more he accompanied a Bishop on his 
annual round. This time it was Bishop McKendree, of 
whose visit to Hagerstown we read in old newspapers. Only 
a few more years of work were left to him. 

In all this work he had not been hampered by ties of 
human affection, for Sarah Smith, whom he had hoped to 
marry, died early. She had moved with her family to 
Kentucky, where he was to come for her; but the short love 
story had a sad ending, and he was left free to devote him- 
self to his exacting labor. 

There is a pathetic story told of his last sermon, preached 
in Greencastle. It is said that while he was preaching he 
walked up and down among the congregation, as was his 
custom when he was much moved, speaking to them person- 
ally. His text was from the thirteenth chapter of Jeremiah, 
where those are spoken of whose feet stumble upon the dark 



94 ^be Hntletam 

mountains, where the light is turned to the shadow of death. 
"My soul shall weep in secret places," ran the words of the 
text, and "mine eyes shall weep sore and run down with 
tears." He preached so powerfully that his hearers were 
very much affected, and a little girl broke away from the 
congregation, ran to her mother who was sitting in a tent, 
and throwing her arms around her neck cried and told her 
that Brother Hitt was going to die. 

Already his feet stumbled on the dark mountains, for 
immediately after he sickened with typhoid fever, and his 
nephew Samuel Hitt came and took him away, back to the 
old stone house by the Antietam, and nursed him there till he 
died. There he lies buried in the walled graveyard, who 
was one of the consecrated souls of those rough days. 

Martin Hitt married Margaret Smith, and Samuel 
married Ann. All of the family, both Hitts and Smiths, 
moved to different parts of the West. The house by the 
Antietam came by inheritance to Samuel Hitt, the son of 
Martin. It was this Samuel who took his uncle back to the 
old place to die, and who later superintended the building 
of the stone bridge, several years before he, too, was fired 
with the western fever, and left the old place in Maryland 
forever. 

The country in the neighborhood of Keedysville and the 
Hitt bridge has its historical tablets, telling of the passage 
of the troops through this region. It is impossible to get 
away from these reminders of the war. There is a memory 
of Keedysville, belonging to those days after the battle of 
Antietam, which brings before us vividly the emotions of 
that time — the story told by Oliver Wendell Holmes of his 
journey in search of his wounded son. The kindly little 



lkeet)i20vUle an& tbe Ibitt Brt^ge 95 

Doctor, whose name is a synonym for gentle humor, and a 
certain radiant irony, is not generally associated in one's 
mind with tragic things. 

He has told the story of the trip : how the news of the 
battle reached Boston, and the message that his son was 
among the wounded. The telegram which filled him with 
anxiety and dismay said, ' ' Wounded in the neck, though not 
seriously." He at once set out to find the sufferer. He 
narrates with the greatest precision and detail the incidents 
of the journey. His sensitive brain, made keener by suf- 
fering which he tried to suppress, was alive to every little 
incident, and every characteristic of his fellow-travellers. 
He describes the country through which he passed, and the 
plump Maryland women, whom he likened to ducks, in 
contrast to the thinner women of the North. 

In Frederick, in Middletown and Boonsboro, wherever a 
house or barn was turned into a hospital, he went, sometimes 
in the dead of night, asking always the same question of the 
rows of men lying on the straw. Were there any Massachu- 
setts men among them? 

He roused weary doctors, who were trying to snatch a 
little rest from their terrible labors. In time he reached 
Keedysville, which he described as a torpid little vil- 
lage, with his one question, which he had travelled five 
hundred miles to ask, still on his lips, Where was Captain 
Holmes ? 

For a long time no one could tell him, as there were some 
thousands of wounded men scattered about the villages and 
farms. Finally some one directed him to a little log cabin, 
plastered and whitewashed, where he had been only the day 
before. But the woman of the house said that the Captain 



96 ^be antietam 

had gone into Hagerstown in a milk cart, in fairly good 
condition and spirits. 

He might have gone on to Hagerstown, but he felt sure 
that his son would go at once to Philadelphia to stay with 
friends. He therefore decided to go back to Frederick, and 
from there to Philadelphia, avoiding the passage through 
Hagerstown, which he knew was in a state of confusion. 
To while away the time before starting he drove to the 
outskirts of the battlefield, and forded a wide creek in 
which soldiers were washing their clothes, which he con- 
jectured must be the Antietam. 

A great disappointment met him in Philadelphia, for the 
Captain was not there, and had not been heard from. He 
went back to Harrisburg, and boarded every train which 
came in from Maryland, looking for his son. At last he 
heard of one which would come through from Hagerstown 
and waited for it with the greatest anxiety. It slid in long 
after the time it was due, and he walked through it on his 
apparently hopeless errand. There on a front seat was the 
wounded Captain, who had flitted before him as the will-o'- 
the-wisp before a belated traveller. 

They met like Anglo-saxons, without any show of emo- 
tion on either side. Had Doctor Holmes gone on into 
Hagerstown, instead of turning back to Frederick, he would 
have found his son, well cared for, in an old house built and 
lived in by Nathaniel Rochester, set in an old garden, with 
immortal box trees, and as happy as a man could be under 
the circumstances. 



Chapter X 

The Bridge at Delemere 

THE most romantically situated of the bridges is that 
which crosses the Antietam at Delemere. The creek 
makes one of its great loops here, between high hills which 
cut off the view in every direction. At this secluded bend 
of hill and stream it is as lonely as in the earliest days of the 
settlement of the valley, and one might imagine that the 
red man had just passed over the hilltops, to make way 
for the white races. The steep slopes rising from the water 
are densely wooded, and in their groves the birds sing like 
mad, as joyous as if nothing had ever come to frighten 
them away, and they were the real, legitimate owners of 
this beautiful spot. 

Before it reaches Delemere the road passes over a strange 
rocky ridge called the Devil's Backbone. This high and 
narrow spur lies between the Antietam and Beaver Creek, 
separating them, and forcing them to flow for quite a dis- 
tance within hail of each other before they can join their 
waters. It rises between the two creeks, abrupt and brist- 
ling with boulders. The top of the ridge is so narrow that 
there is no more than room on it for the road, and in 
places is so contracted that two teams cannot pass. If the 
sides were not thickly covered with a growth of bushes, 

7 97 



98 Zbc Hntletam 

which add to its apparent width, one would have some 
uncomfortable moments in driving over it. 

From the top is seen a curious sight — the creeks on 
either side flowing in opposite directions. On the one 
hand the waters of Beaver Creek glide with you, on the 
other those of the Antietam slip behind. The view from 
the height is delightful, the hillsides are clothed with the 
delicate foliage of deciduous trees and dark cedars, and 
lighted everywhere by the exquisite, fiery flush of the redbud. 
These redbud thickets along the Antietam no pen nor 
brush can paint in the actual glory of their vision; and if 
any one should think this praise exaggerated, let him drive 
through the country when they trail their clouds of glory 
over the hills, and seem to typify all the joy and rapture 
of awakening spring, as it bursts the bands of winter. 

At the foot of the Devil's Backbone the streams come 
together, and just at their junction is the bridge over Beaver 
Creek. It is a humpbacked bridge of one arch, with a high 
hoop like the bridges of tea boxes and fans, simple and solid 
and so quaint that it is the most delightful thing imaginable. 
The hoop rounds itself in the water, which reflects like a 
mirror the velvet grass and airy branches about it, making a 
picture which it is impossible to look at without pleasure 
Young hazel bushes spring up against its gray walls, and 
even a few small ones from the earth on the bridge itself. 

The Antietam now makes a great turn, and the road 
twists under the hill. The hillsides are too steep for culti- 
vation, so there is nothing to break the wildness of the scene. 
Another sudden turn brings one to the Delemere bridge, 
with its three beautiful arches repeating themselves in the 
water. Beside the stream are the ruins of the old mill. 



Zbc Bridge at Belcmere 99 

draped in vines, its broken stones decked with wild flowers. 
High up in the upper story of the wall is a fireplace opening 
and hearth, and the arches below, through which the water 
ran, are still perfect. It seems to exist for no other purpose 
than to tempt the artist and amateur photographer to spend 
long hours by the waterside, sketching and making pictures. 

On the hill above the water, on the same side as the mill 
but so high up as to make it seem out of the picture, is a 
cluster of dwellings where was once held the famous school of 
"Delamere," taught by the Reverend Bartholomew Booth. 
He was an English clergyman, who lived before the Revolu- 
tion at "Needwood, " on the other side of the South Moun- 
tain, near the village of Burkettsville. When the colonies 
were at war with England, there was a great prejudice felt 
against the English clergymen. It was too often justified. 
Many of them were younger sons, sent to the colonies by 
their families at home, interested in getting them out of the 
way. Their behavior in America brought contempt on 
their profession, in Virginia and Maryland. In the case 
of men of real worth, like Mr. Booth, there was trouble of 
another sort. Many of them were seriously troubled at be- 
ing required to go against their oath of allegiance to Great 
Britain, which they took at ordination. They felt that, 
until they could transfer their fealty to another government, 
they were bound by this oath and they were in consequence 
distrusted by their American neighbors, and often driven 
from their parishes. 

The Reverend Bartholomew Booth was deprived of his 
parish. Forced to support himself and his family, he 
bought land along the Antietam and opened a school for 
boys. He must have been more liberally treated here than 



loo Z\)c antietam 

across the mountain, for it is a matter of record that he 
held services for several years for St. John's parish, then 
called All Saints', when there was no other rector. Hagers- 
town then had no church building, and the one nearest his 
home was at Chapel Woods, near what is now St. James 
School. There he held services in a little log church. All 
Saints' parish was then so large that it extended over three 
counties, and its rector must preach wherever he found a 
congregation. 

As we see it now, Delemere (for the name is so spelled 
to-day) would seem to have been a strange place to choose 
for establishing a school, the situation is so remote and 
secluded. But the road which passes by it was then the 
main road through Frederick County to the West. The 
travel which later went over the Boonsboro turnpike to 
Hagerstown, and on to the Conococheague, at that time 
passed by Delemere to Williamsport. It was the old 
Braddock's road, for when Braddock's army came through 
the valley, it crossed the South Mountain at Turner's Gap, 
came down by Keedysville and "Delamere" to Williams- 
port, and there crossed the river into Virginia. Twenty 
years before Mr. Booth settled down to teach his boys' 
school, that army had marched down the Devil's Back- 
bone (which must have been the Devil's own road at that 
time), and the woods of Delemere had echoed to the jingle 
of accoutrements, and soldiers' oaths, and scarlet coats 
flashed through the green. 

Guests came to visit Mr. Booth's family. Once again 
we find that irrepressible lover and man of the world, General 
Gates, courting by the Antietam. This time it was a young 
lady called Mary Valence, the daughter of a Liverpool 



Zhc Bridge at Belemere loi 

merchant, who was visiting the Booths. She listened to the 
General's suit with more favor than did her lovely but 
childish rival down the stream, and in time married him 
and went to keep his house at "Traveller's Rest, " across the 
river, in Virginia. 

Some letters have been preserved in the Booth family 
from parents who sent their sons to his school. One of 
them was written in 1777 by Mr. Robert Morris, who had 
sent on his little son, not quite eight years old, from York, 
Pennsylvania. He wrote that he was at a loss for school- 
books, which he could not get in York, and promised to 
send to England for them. He was so well pleased with the 
school that he recommended it to his friends, and a year 
and a half later General Arnold and Colonel Plater sent their 
sons to "Delamere." 

Considering the scarcity of good schools through the 
country, it was not strange that such prominent men should 
send their sons to Mr. Booth. Education was a problem for 
parents to consider seriously. In the Southern States, 
where plantation life prevailed, the household was a self- 
sufficing community, very much as in the old days of Eng- 
land. All the industries necessary for maintaining a 
family were carried on at the home centre ; and the school- 
master taught the sons and daughters of the family under 
their own roof tree. Throughout the South, the private 
tutor was the rule, and schools, even private schools, the 
exception. The tutor was usually some English clergyman, 
or clever Scotchman, who had drifted out to the colonies; 
and often the need for them was so great, and there was 
such difficulty in procuring them, that indentured men 
were taken on their arrival to work out their time in this 



I02 Zl)e antietam 

capacity. The young nation, with its eagerness for know- 
ledge, must find a way, and the absurd and pathetic cry, 
which often arose, has been recorded, "A ship is coming 
in. Let 's go and buy a schoolmaster." 

In New England the Puritans soon secured some sort 
of schooling for the children of a community; but there 
small farms drew people close together, and the township 
system of local government brought about a unity that 
was wanting in the plantations of the South. 

In Pennsylvania, neither strictly of the North nor of 
the South, the situation was complicated by the two op- 
posing races, the English and the Germans, who would not 
work together in the matter of public education. The 
Germans wanted their own language taught in the schools, 
and it took a leader like Muhlenberg to try to argue them 
out of such an unreasonable position. There were sectarian 
schools, taught by Quakers and Moravians; but public 
instruction was poorly provided for. It was natural there- 
fore that a good private school in the next State, taught by 
a clergyman and a scholar, should attract attention. 

The difficulty of getting proper school-books, which 
hampered Mr. Morris, was not confined to his experience. 
It was common to the whole country, and was complicated 
by the political conditions. At the time of the Revolution 
people began to realize that American boys ought to be 
taught from American books. Up to that time almost all 
school-books were imported from England. Only Cheever's 
Accidence, which was the standard work for teaching Latin 
throughout the colonies, was written in this country be- 
fore the Revolution. Other school-books had been printed 
in both Boston and Philadelphia, but they were reprints 



^be Bribge at Delemere 103 

like "The New England Primer," which was first printed 
in London and called "The Protestant Tutor." After the 
war Noah Webster got out his famous Spelling Book, and 
after it followed a number of arithmetics, grammars, and 
other text-books. 

The sentiment of patriotism in education was strongly 
felt by Washington. He deplored the custom of sending 
American youths abroad to finish their education, as was 
the almost universal custom in the South. His earnest 
wish was to see a University established in Washington, 
which would draw together young men from all over the 
Union. The friendships formed there would help to do 
away with sectional prejudice, for at that time every State 
was inclined to be intolerant, Pennsylvania looking down on 
Georgia and Maryland on Maine, Massachusetts and Vir- 
ginia eyeing each other askance. Much the same feeling 
which animated Cecil Rhodes in establishing his scholar- 
ships at Oxford, induced Washington to advocate the 
University, 

It is interesting to read the letters in which Benedict 
Arnold set forth his ideas for the education of his sons. 
He dwelt on the practical value of what they were to learn. 

"I wish their education," he wrote, "to be useful rather 
than learned. Life is too uncertain to throw away in 
studies that perhaps one man in Ten thousand has the 
genius to make a figure in. You will Pardon my dictating 
to you. Sir, but as the fortune of every man in this country 
is uncertain, I wish my sons to be educated in such a manner 
that with prudence and Industry they may acquire a 
Fortune, as well as become useful Members of society." 

He wrote that they were to have an allowance, and keep 



I04 ITbe Hntietam 

a regular account of their expenses, which account was to be 
forwarded to him. 

"This will teach them economy and Method," he wrote, 
with that curious scattering of capitals which characterizes 
the letters of the period. And he adds, "I will expect them 
to write to me frequently — of this they will doubtless want 
reminding." 

He must have written this with memories of his own 
schoolboy days, recalling the weekly letters home that are 
the bane of every schoolboy; the blind groping after thoughts 
that will not come, as soon as he gets his pen in hand. No 
doubt, too, he remembered his own childish accounts, 
filled out with the convenient "sundries," that take the 
place of "things it is more interesting not to know." 

These little sons of General Arnold are pathetic figures 
in the picture of Mr. Booth's school, and one follows their 
brief school life at "Delamere" with a melancholy know- 
ledge of what came after. 

The special reason for sending Richard and Benedict to 
school at this time, was General Arnold's marriage to his sec- 
ond wife, the brilliant and beautiful Margaret Shippen of 
Philadelphia. Henry, the youngest son, was left in charge 
of his aunt, Hannah Arnold. Their father was then in 
command of Philadelphia, living in a most extravagant 
style, with lavish display, and giving handsome entertain- 
ments. He was distinguished by his bravery, and by his 
wounds won in battle, and the boys looked up to him with 
admiration and pride. Of the eldest, Benedict, his aunt 
wrote, "Ben is eager to hear everything in relation to his 
father. " 

There was plenty to hear during their school -days. Ar- 



Z\)c Bridge at Delemere 105 

nold's marriage, court-martial, and trial took place during 
their first two years at school. In spite of the kindness with 
which General Washington tried to soften the blow of his 
public censure and reprimand, it was severe. The boys 
suffered, and it is to be hoped that their fellow schoolboys 
were merciful. At this time their Aunt Hannah wrote, 
"We hear nothing from the little boys in Maryland. " 

In the year of Arnold's downfall the boys were left 
through the holidays at "Delamere." Through the almost 
exotic summer of Maryland, they bathed and fished and 
paddled in the Antietam, laying up memories for after life, 
for their later experiences led them far afield, to the cold of 
Nova Scotia and Canada, to the tropical West Indies, and 
to bleak London winters. 

Here all the hurrying life of a Southern summer unfolded 
itself, where the teeming vegetation, with its rush of foliage 
and luxuriance of growth squanders itself on field and hill, 
where the heat broods over the earth day and night, and 
owls hoot through the warm darkness, and katydids make 
their monotonous clicking among the leaves; where the 
mournful cry is heard from the black woods, plaintive and 
remonstrant, " Whip-poor- Will ! Whip-poor- Will ! " and 
the bullfrog sounds his deep note, twanging like the spent 
string of a 'cello; and with all these notes and sounds 
of the dark hours, the fairy pulsing lights of the fireflies flit 
up and down, over the meadow grass and through the 
bushes, like the lanterns of elves, like falling sparks, or 
shooting stars; where through the golden days, when the 
shadows of tree and hill are blue on the grain fields, comes 
the sweet, clear call, flute-like and confident, "Bob- White! 
Bob-White!" 



io6 Zbc antietam 

So the ardent summer moves on, from the time the 
flushed and eager redbud rushes into bloom, till the frost 
comes, and nuts and leaves drop again. 

To Arnold's little sons the fall of the year brought 
their most terrible trial. Their love and admiration received 
its most crushing blow in the news of Andre's capture and 
their father's treason. Their Aunt Hannah, who through 
everything was their best and strongest friend, sent for 
them to join her, and in the autumn, when woods and 
stream were most delightful, they said good-bye to the 
Antietam. 

From this time on until her death, they were often 
with their aunt. For a short time Arnold took arms against 
his country, though it was an ordeal from which he shrank. 
He raised a regiment called the American Legion, to fight 
on the side of the English, and the boys were given com- 
missions as lieutenants. When the war ended they were 
put upon half-pay, as retired officers, though they were 
mere children of twelve and thirteen. When peace was 
restored, they went to live in London, but the coldness and 
neglect with which he was treated were too hard for Arnold 
to bear patiently, and he went into a trading venture with 
the West Indies, and for a time made his home at St. John, 
New Brunswick. Richard and Henry joined him, but the 
experiment was a failure, Arnold went back to London, and 
the boys to their Aunt Hannah, in Canada, where her 
brother had received a grant of lands. 

Poor Benedict, the oldest, and the one who had adored 
his father most, died young, of a wound gotten when fighting 
as an officer of artillery in the West Indies. He was only 
twenty-seven. Soon after, Arnold died in dark and dreary 



Zbc Bridge at 2)elemerc 107 

London, and the mournful tradition is that he asked to have 
his American uniform put on him, that he might die in it. 
Hannah Arnold survived her brother but a few years, and 
after her death Richard married, and had a large family, 
and in the language of the old tales, lived happy ever after. 

The two women who stood by General Arnold through 
good and evil were so much more than ordinary in char- 
acter that they make it possible to believe that there was 
unsuspected good in him to call out such devotion. His 
sister Hannah was a woman of strong and lovable character, 
and loyal to her brother to the end. She never reproached, 
him, and always wrote of him as "my unfortunate brother. " 
His wife, the lovely and gentle "Peggy" Shippen, was one 
of the sweetest women ever known. Very young when she 
married, sensitive and winning, with a character one would 
have thought too soft and tender to bear misfortune, she 
developed the greatest strength and heroism, devoting 
herself to her husband in the sad and trying years of life in 
London, and living in exile afterwards for the sake of her 
sons, who, she understood well, would always suffer in 
America for their father's disgrace. 

If these reflections deserve the reproach of saying an 
"undisputed thing in such a solemn way," it is because the 
drama of life takes on an added pathos when seen through a 
child's eyes. A child's heart can keep faith long after a 
man's world condemns him, and one can hope that these 
little lads, going out from their Maryland school, held to 
their childish affection, and that in the wider knowledge 
of maturity they ranged themselves with the two women 
in loyalty to their father. 

These are long thoughts for the banks of the Antietam, 



io8 ZCbe antietam 

more fit for thinking of by winter fires, when the coals glow 
and ashes fall: but one would like to have looked into the 
schoolroom at "Delamere" in the days when the boys were 
hearing rumors of their father's stormy career, and Ben 
was eager to learn everything in relation to him. 

We may be sure that in after years, in the long, snowy 
days of Canadian winters, Richard's children heard many 
tales of school life by the Antietam, of chestnut hunting in 
the woods, and possum hunts by torchlight with little negro 
boys, when he and his brother Ben went to school to Mr, 
Booth. 



Chapter XI 

The Bridges at Roxbury, Claggett's, and Rose's Mills 

/^VER the Antietam between Delemere and Funkstown 
^^ are sprung three bridges, which are among the finest 
that cross the stream. They all stand at the crossings of 
country roads, in quiet places. No special history attaches 
to them; they are not connected with any historical event, 
nor identified with any well-known character. One thing 
they have in common, each bridge stands beside a mill. 

In each case the mill antedated the bridge, and the true 
sequence in which to name the triad which is repeated again 
and again along the Antietam would be, the ford, the mill, 
the bridge. For the ford brought the road, and the road 
drew the settler to build his house and mill where his most 
elemental wants would be satisfied. With water to quench 
his thirst, and meal to bake his cake, he was fortified for his 
struggle with the wilderness. When the first mill wheels 
turned, and the first meal was ground between the stones 
on the Antietam, this region was called the Back- Woods, a 
suggestive name making one think of the deeper shades 
and wilder country behind each settler who penetrated it. 

As from this little point a radius of settlement was made, 
the increased trade at the mill brought the need of the bridge. 

109 



no Zbc antietam 

There are but two exceptions to this general law : Bumside's 
bridge and the Hitt bridge had no mill within sight. 

When transportation was done by wagons and boats, the 
mills in the valley were important. Things made on the 
spot had their value. These flouring mills belonged to 
the day of small things, and glancing back to the old mill 
life one sees what the trade did for the country. 

As far back as the records go there were mills, for the 
settler's first work was to plant grain and com to feed his 
family. Fine crops of wheat were raised all through the 
Cumberland Valley. Tropical looking Indian corn, with 
rippling leaves and hanging tassels, and crimson silk tipping 
the full ears, grew to perfection in the limestone country. 

Where the road went down to the water the miller built 
his mill, and to the farmers it fulfilled the office of the 
country store, and the city club ; it was a gossip-place where 
they met and exchanged the news of the neighborhood and 
discussed the affairs of the nation. Weighty subjects were 
settled there, and every man's business was passed from 
mouth to mouth. The countryman, bringing his grain in 
saddlebags to exchange for flour and meal, enjoyed the idle 
sociability of the mill door. 

Strange figures according to our notions gathered there, 
for, standing on the public roads, they took toll of the news 
from travellers going east and west. Fur traders and trap- 
pers bringing their valuable furs and peltries to Baltimore 
rested by the stream and told tales of the western country, 
inflaming many a young man's fancy, till he was tempted 
to leave the safe life of the settlement for the hunting 
grounds. Wagoners from Baltimore, travellers on their 
way to Cumberland, strolling players who follow on the 



IRoibur^, Claggett'e, anb IRoee's flDille 



III 



heels of the youngest and rudest civiHzation, rested at the 
mill. The patent medicine men, such as now advertise 
their wares to the accompaniment of horns and flaring lights 
in the Square at Hagerstown, lingered at the mill to display 
their Damask Lip Salve, their Ague Cure, and Indian 
Specific. These were the days before the bridges, when 
the traveller had to wait for the stream to subside, when 
swollen by storms, before he could go on with his journey. 

There were other uses to which the mills were put. They 
were appointed places for militia musters, in the wars of the 
Revolution and of 1812. They were advertised as the 
places for the collection of taxes, and many notices, over 
the name of Nathaniel Rochester, called for the payment 
of taxes on a certain date at this or that mill. They were 
often used for the sale of household goods and furniture, 
when any farm in the neighborhood changed hands, and 
were favorite places for a horse trade. They had a place 
in the social life of the community apart from their legiti- 
mate purpose, and a man of character in charge of a mill 
had a wide influence. The notice which was printed on the 
death of one of the old millers near Hagerstown, " He was a 
peaceable citizen, an obliging neighbor, and Honest Man," 
might have been repeated on the passing of many of the 
millers of Antietam. 

When the chief shipping trade in flour passed from Wil- 
mington to Baltimore, Washington County farmers found a 
ready sale for all they ground. It was delivered to middle- 
men, who took it down the river to Alexandria, Georgetown, 
and Washington, from which points it was distributed. 
There were warehouses on the Potomac at Williamsport 
where the flour was received, and advertisements for hand- 



112 



Z\)c antietam 



ling it were numerous. To quote an instance, Thomas 
Kennedy advertised that he would receive the flour to be 
delivered at his warehouse before the ist of April, and con- 
vey it down the river to those points for one dollar a barrel. 
The commission men kept a supply of groceries suited to 
the back-country, which the farmer could take if he wished 
in exchange for his flour, and which could be carried up the 
river in the emptied boats. 

The equipment of the mill consisted of the mill building 
with overshot or undershot wheel, the mill dam and race, 
and the cooper's shop where the barrels were made to hold 
the flour. Near them was the miller's house, often of stone 
like the mill ; and very often a distillery completed the group. 
Some of the descriptions ran thus: "A new Merchant Mill 
and Saw Mill, working under a 19 feet fall, with two over- 
shot water wheels. The Grist mill has one pair of French 
burrs, and one pair of Alleghany stones 4^ feet diameter"; 
and again, "Two water wheels 20 feet diameter, about 8 feet 
head overshot, with elevators for both wheat and flour," 
and "A Mill house of stone, on a large scale, one pair of 
French burrs and one pair of Country Stones. " 

Superfine and common flour, middlings, ship stuffs, 
shorts, bran, buckwheat, and corn meal were ground at the 
mills. The same William Faux who has been quoted be- 
fore, wrote about a friend whom he visited, who owned a 
complete grist and saw mill, and had all the wheat he could 
grind for himself and his neighbors. From the latter he 
took the tenth for toll, in payment for his work. The 
services of a careful, faithful miller cost him five hundred 
dollars a year. 

There were numerous advertisements for good, sober 



IRoibur^, Claggetra, anb IRose'e fIDille 113 

millers, who understood their trade, and such a man was 
offered a house to live in, enough ground for a garden, and a 
stable. Often the miller stayed for years at one mill. The 
mill owner might own several mills on different streams. 

Millers married millers' daughters. Again and again 
youth and maid, brought up in the dusty atmosphere of the 
mill, within smell of the sweet flour and clean grain, joined 
together and established themselves among the brotherhood 
of millers. Often the trade was handed down from father to 
son. The miller set his little boy to work when hardly able 
to carry his half-bushel of rye. When he went to Hagers- 
town, the little son was left to tend the mill, to see that the 
mill-race did not get clogged up with leaves, nor the stones 
gummed with garlic. The lad grew up with the ambition to 
be a miller. He had his book to read, The Young Miller 
and Millwright's Guide. He watched the great wagons 
with their strong teams coming to the mill door with their 
loads, and listened to the dickering of the farmers over the 
grain, and in time he too became a "dusty miller. " 

Go into one of these old mills, and see the cobwebs heavy 
with flour flapping under the beams, the rude wooden pins 
which held the machinery together, the old millstones 
leaning against the wall, the picks for dressing them laid on 
the deep window-seat, the half-door open above to let in the 
air and closed below to keep out inquisitive animals. There 
is something most attractive in the surroundings, in the 
sound of the rushing water falling over the dam, the quiet 
stretch that backs up the stream and reflects the trees, the 
noisy, busy waters of the mill-race hurrying into the dark- 
ness under the mill. One can understand how the miller's 
sons and daughters held to the old trade, and were well 



114 ITbc Hntietam 

content to spend their own lives amid its sights and sounds. 

The cooper's shop is not the least attractive among the 
quaint, substantial buildings of old days, still to be seen 
all through the countr\^ under the lee of the mill. Sober 
coopers were as much in demand as sober millers, and good 
wages were offered to a journeyman cooper well acquainted 
with tight- work, that is, who could make barrels that would 
hold liquids as well as dry materials. The cooper, too, 
had his house and garden, beside his shop. 

Though the cooper put together the barrels at the mill, 
the principal parts were made in the mountains by the 
mountaineers who cut down the trees. The pieces were 
shaped by hand on the spot, different w^oods being used for 
different parts. All the staves were of white oak, all the 
barrel heads of chestnut. A third tree furnished the withes 
which bound the barrels, in those days of hand w^ork, before 
the iron hoop was used. This was hickory, and men to-day 
still remember when the wagons would come through the 
town loaded with long hickory poles, being taken to 
the mills to be split and used for binding the barrels. For 
the splitting of the hickory was the cooper's work, and done 
at the shop. The barrels were made to hold one hundred 
and ninety-six pounds of flour, and the cooper was paid for 
his work by the piece. One Washington County cooper, who 
learned his trade at Locust Grove, supplied all the barrels 
for the milling business at Harpers Ferry. 

One member of the little milling circle must not be for- 
gotten, the apprentice, w^ho gave his twenty-four hours to his 
master the miller in order that he might learn the trade. 
An inconsequent member he often was, the "stout, healthy 
lad of sixteen or seventeen, " so often advertised for. His 



IRoibur^, (TlaoGCtrs, ant) TRose's fBMll0 115 

distinguishing characteristic seems to have been his irre- 
pressible tendency to run away. Was it the rough usage he 
received from the miller, or the incorrigible, adventurous 
disposition of youth, which constantly inspired his feet 
to rove, and carried him in the dead of night away from 
his master's mill? "Ran away from the Widow Rentches 
mill," runs the oft-told tale, "an apprentice to the milling 
trade, Andrew Chestnut, between sixteen and seventeen 
years of age." His drab roundabout, his swansdown waist- 
coat and linen trousers, and his mealey hat (whatever that 
might be, suggestive of his unwilling trade) too plainly 
marked him out for recapture; and for the imgracious task 
of returning him, the performer received no more than six 
cents and a basket of bran. 

What boy would now think his employer had a right to 
all his time, both night and day? He slept at the mill, in a 
bunk against the wall, and through the healthy sleep of 
youth and in his dreams he must listen to the noise of the 
mill-wheel, that it should not be too slow from the clogging 
up of the mill-race, and for the sound of the stones, that it 
should not become dull with the gummy exudations of the 
garlic. And if either betrayed some obstruction, he must 
waken instantly and remedy it. 

One of the industries subsidiary to the mills was the 
cutting of millstones of coimtry manufacture, called Alle- 
ghany stones. They were cut on the North Mountain, and 
used for the coarser work of the mill, the grinding of meal 
and middlings, and chopping of rye into inch pieces to feed 
to horses in hot weather. 

The stones used for grinding flour were brought from 
France at great expense, and were called French buhr 



ii6 JLhc antietam 

stones. They were made of a rough quartz from the Paris 
basin, called silica, which supplied the best millstones all over 
the world. They were very hard, honeycombed with irregu- 
lar cells, which gave them an unequalled surface for break- 
ing the grain and grinding it into fine flour. They were cut 
in sections, and put together for use with strong iron bands. 
One sees them still throughout the mill country, lying beside 
the mill, or used as door-stones; just as in fishing villages 
sections of whales' backbones are used for steps and footstools. 

Curious names were given to the parts of the millstone. 
The lower stationary stone was the bedstone, and the 
revolving upper one, the runner. The hole through which 
the spindle passed was the eye, and around the eye circled 
smoothly the bosom. From this ran grooves tooled through 
the stone according to a certain pattern, toward the margin, 
which was called the skirt. One part of the mechanism, 
which fed the grain to the stones, was the Damsel, so prone 
are men to give to their articles of trade feminine terms; 
the gunner's gun, the sailor's ship, the machinist's engine, 
are all, "She." 

On these fine French stones, flour was ground which old 
people tell us was far superior to the present flour made by 
the roller process. It rose quickly and had a quality which 
the present flour lacks. It was "lively-like," whereas 
roller-made flour is flat and lifeless. 

The other millstones, known as chopping stones, were 
used for grinding meal, and are still so used in the mills, 
where as in Bible days one sees the com ground between 
the upper and the nether millstone. It is amusing to note 
that in very old days in England, the lower millstone was 
called "the ass," because it was too lazy to move. 



IRoibur^, Claggetrs, ant) IRose's flDills 117 

One thinks of millers as mild men, but they were some- 
times as tempestuous as the waters of the mill-race. There 
is a story told of a miller who was called upon to testify in a 
case in which he did not wish to appear. He declined to 
attend court, on the plea that his health was bad. The 
lawyers for the other side came down to take his deposition, 
with the intention of declaring that, by reason of his age 
and infirmities, he was not competent to give testimony. 
One of the lawyers was a young man just admitted to the 
bar; the other afterward became a Chief Justice. They 
drove down to the country, and saw the old miller sitting 
on the porch of his house beside the mill. Confidently 
they began to put him through his paces ; but soon, to the 
dismay of the younger man, he found himself being taken 
through such an examination in the law as he had never 
undergone, even when admitted to the bar. The perspira- 
tion streamed from his face under the merciless attack of 
the miller, and as soon as he could he got away from the mill, 
leaving the old man triumphant. 

Of this same miller it is told that he was called to the 
Conococheague, by the news that at a mill he owned on 
that stream the mill-dam was washed away. He came 
back in the worst possible humor. ' ' Damn a mill without 
a dam!" he cried, telling of his experience to a neighbor. 
"And damn it with a Damn!" he added hastily. 

Driving through the country from Delemere to Roxbury, 
the road goes over uplands from whose high reaches there 
is an outlook over hills, beyond more hills, to the distant 
mountains. Then, as what goes up must come down, the 
road drops suddenly to the level of the stream where 
the Antietam gleams, spanned by the graceful arches of the 



ii8 JLhc antictam 

Roxbury bridge, with its wide roadway. It is an old settle- 
ment, and would be beautiful but that the picture is marred 
by the great bam-like buildings of a modem distillery, 
padlocked and sheathed in metal, and the air is tainted with 
the fumes of whiskey. 

The man who built the stone mill, which is now used 
as one of the bonding houses for liquor, came to this spot 
when he was forty-three years old, and doubled his years 
and added eleven to the sum before he left it for another 
world. 

On through the country the drive takes one, past St. 
Mark's church, and by "Jones's X-Roads," where old Billy 
Jones had his smithy; by wheat fields, and hedgerows of 
bittersweet, where the butter fly- weed, most gorgeous of 
Maryland wild flowers, flashes its masses of orange, and 
daisies star the grass. 

One of the features of these summer drives is the clouds 
of small yellow butterflies that float along the way. They 
make journeys of incredible length for such frail atoms, 
and knowing this how delightful is their whimsical flight, 
their hovering over every object that attracts them. Now 
wavering in the breeze, now softly alighting, they make the 
roadside animated with a cloud of a hundred lives. Now 
settling about the margin of a pool, reflecting the clear sky, 
they girdle it with pale sulphur. And there is a spiritual 
beauty in these dancing companies, so effortless and full of 
joy on their long journey. 

By hill and dale the road goes until it comes to the old 
Claggett mill. The group of buildings here has already been 
spoken of. There is no finer collection the whole length of 
the Antietam. Within a stone's throw of each other are a 



IRoibur^, dlagactt's, an^ IRoec'e flDilla 119 

great three-storied mill with hip roof and beautiful water- 
arch; a small stone bridge spanning the mill-race, so good 
that it proclaims the hand that built it ; and the stone house 
and large bridge. It is an example still perfect of the old 
mill settlement. 

Driving up to the house one summer evening by "early 
candle-light," to ask for tiger lilies which fill one end of the 
yard, the house behind its overhanging trees showed dark, 
except where from a wide basement opening the warm 
light streamed upward. It was so impressive, with its three 
stories and galleries running across its face, backed up 
against the hill and facing the mill, that it carried the imagi- 
nation back to the time when these mill houses were like 
oases in the desert of travel through a sparsely settled 
country, and symbols of hospitality to the traveller. 

Only a few steps away is the bridge, but so placed that 
owing to the roughness of the banks and the growth of 
underbrush it is hard to get a view of it. It has one un- 
usual feature: the abutments up-stream are rounded, but 
down-stream flattened and angular. 

The owners of this mill were large slaveholders, and 
their property extended from here down to Chapel Woods, 
near the college of St. James. They had a hundred men in 
the harvest field at once, and their mill set the price of grain, 
which the lesser ones were bound to follow. They were the 
first farmers in the valley to introduce machinery, and do 
away with the old fashion of threshing the grain with a 
flail. On the hill behind the house were other stone houses, 
in which lived other members of the family. 

Not much farther up the stream is another large bridge, 
known as the bridge at Rose's mill, though only the broken 



I20 ZTbe antietam 

walls of the mill remain. On the opposite bank are the 
ruins of the cooper's shop, and between them the mill-dam 
pours its waters down to the piers of the bridge. 

Once this bridge was seen on a winter evening, when the 
sky was like fire, and the air filled with golden light. The 
bare trees were sharply etched against the sky. In contrast 
with their thin tracery, the noble old bridge showed its 
massive bulk ; and the strong spring of its arches was thrown 
out against the shining water. 

Here again John Weaver made the abutments differ on 
the two sides of the bridge, on one round and projecting, on 
the other shallow and square. It is on this bridge that the 
peculiar feature noted earlier is found — the floor of the 
bridge widened at an angle, making a place where the wagons 
could drive under the door and have their loads lifted into 
the mill. 

These two bridges are the most individual of the series ; 
for though the Lloyds' bridges on the turnpikes are sub- 
stantial and handsome, they have not the special character 
of the two just named, which (with the exception of the 
little bridge beyond Leitersburg) were the last that John 
Weaver built, and his strongest work. 



Chapter XII 

The Bridge at Funkstown 

THE turnpike bridge at Funkstown is the only one of all 
the series which seems to belong to a town. The 
bridge at Hagerstown, though not far from the busiest part 
of the city, always seems to be quite outside of it, and is 
a lonely bridge, seldom visited. At Funkstown the main 
street turns a corner, merging into the pike, and comes out 
upon the bridge. The little village is so old, so quaint and 
quiet, with its long street lined with silver poplars which 
make a bower of it on summer evenings, with its flagstone 
pavements, its taverns and stone houses, that it might 
belong to the old country. It seems outside the rush and 
hurry of modern life. It is very neat ; and its little gardens, 
tended with the greatest care, were famous more than a 

century ago. 

The trolley which runs through the street, over the hill, 
and straight away to the mountains, does not in the least 
disturb its calm. Motor cars rush through without causing 
any excitement. Changes in the fashion of travel are 
nothing to Funkstown, for it has seen such a rush and roar of 
travel as this country will never see again. It lies upon 
the old turnpike road from Baltimore to Wheeling. Stage 
coaches and wagon teams, droves of cattle, swearing team- 



121 



122 ^bc Bntlct«nm 

sters, noted men travelling cast and west, all came through 
Funkstowii, and gave it the animation of a perpetual Fair. 

Nothing will ever waken it to such life again. It has 
fallen on days of calm old age, and is suflicient to itself on 
the strength of its memories, content to keep within its 
ancient borders, a clean, old, charming village. 

Its real name is Jerusalem, but no one troubles about it. 
The man who founded it passed away into the great Western 
country, and was never traced out in his new home. Only 
the village which he founded peipetuates his name, and 
that without the right to do so. Funkstown has content- 
edly given up its rightful title. Legal deeds are made out 
to property in Jf^rusalem, and one might believe he was tak- 
ing possession in a dream country, for its name is never 
spoken. It is like the tail of the dodo, of which the school- 
boy wrote in his composition, after hearing that it had no 
tail to speak of. "The dodo has a tail, but we never mention 
it." 

The bridge at Funkstown, the oldest over the Antietam, 
might be the youngest judging by the life and gayety about 
it. The trolley from Hagerstown brings crowds of holiday- 
makers who row on the creek, and make picnics along its 
banks. In summer the water is alive with craft. Young 
girls paddle in canoes, and brown and bareheaded young 
men take their boats up the stream. Children play on the 
grassy banks, and there is a continual hum of laughter and 
gay voices. The tide of youth and pleasure passes up and 
down under the gray arches of the bridge. 

In winter, when the country is white with snow, and a 
hard frost stills the waters, skating parties come to the 
bridge. The trolley running back and forth discharges 



Zbc Bridge at jfunl^6to\x)u 123 

its load of merrymakers. Groups along the banks keep 
up bright fires, and again the scene is as gay as in summer. 
There is no place in the village where the young people can 
go for ices on hot days, or for tea in winter. The quiet 
town guards the bridge, but lies a century behind the life 
which eddies round it. 

This life of the Antietam increases year by year, as 
Hagerstown grows larger. One cannot row for a long dis- 
tance up the stream, but there is an unfailing charm in the 
quiet reaches of water. The wheat and com fields come 
down to the shore, and the farm wagons make a fine color, 
with their bay horses, and richly colored loads of com and 
grain. Or if one leaves the water to stroll through the 
village, there are fresh green lawns to see, with pampas 
grass and roses, and geraniums and begonias set out on the 
stoops. This is the Funkstown of to-day, but a century ago, 
its atmosphere was very different. 

One of the earliest memories of the place is when George 
Washington in 1790 rode through it on his way to Hagers- 
town. We are told that Captain Rezin Davis, with his 
company of militia, which numbered soldiers of the Revolu- 
tion in its ranks, went down the road a mile beyond Jeru- 
salem, to meet the General and escort him to Hagerstown. 
The whole country turned out to see him. 

He came to make an inspection of the Potomac at 
Williamsport, where it was proposed to establish the na- 
tional capital. But there was another reason for his interest 
in the river. It had long been his ambition to develop some 
scheme by which it could be made navigable, and become a 
way of communication with the Western country. With his 
far-sighted vision he saw, beyond the dreams of home of the 



124 Zlbe Hntletam 

settler, beyond the hunting grounds of the fur trader, what 
would to-day be called Empire. He realized the greatness 
of the Western country, as no one else did at that time, with 
its rich corn lands and cattle lands, its rivers and prairies; 
and his determination to bind it to the United States 
amounted to a passion. He knew that self-interest alone 
is what holds one country to another, and that the inter- 
course of trade makes them interdependent; and in order 
to tie the West to the East, there must be an easy and 
convenient trading route. He deplored the necessity of a 
long journey by land. He knew that trade follows water, 
and that to draw it away from a water to a land route, the 
way must be made easy and all obstacles removed. He 
feared the Mississippi, which was the natural and easy path 
for trade to follow, to the port of New Orleans. It drew 
the commerce of the West, and would influence the settlers 
to enter into alliance with foreign governments. He saw 
in this a continual menace to the power of the United 
States, which must be overcome by substituting an easy 
way of bringing the produce of the West to Eastern seaports. 

His scheme was to make the Potomac and James rivers 
navigable to their headwaters, and establish short and easy 
portages between them and the Monongahela, the Cheat, and 
Little Kanawha. "Rivers are roads that move," said Pas- 
chal, and it was by means of rivers, those natural roads, 
that he wished to draw the trade of the West to the East. 

His object was never attained in the way he dreamed of. 
But in another way the end was accomplished. His de- 
termination to tie the Western country to the East by a trade 
route was so impressed upon his contemporaries, that it 
resulted in the great road across the mountains, and the 



^be Bri^G^ at yunl^stown 125 

tremendous amount of trade which went over it justified his 
passionate belief. Thirty years passed before the vision 
was realized as far as getting the road through the valley 
lay. All the working on men, the preparation of human 
minds which has to be gone through before great things are 
accomplished, was to ferment like leaven in the decades 
after this visit. 

The way through the mountains which was the path 
ultimately followed as a trading route was known to Wash- 
ington better than to most men. He had gone over the 
Indian trail with Braddock, though ill with fever, following 
the march of the troops in a wagon ; and both to the north 
and south of the Potomac he was acquainted with the 
woods. These almost invisible forest trails, faint and hard 
to follow, were unerringly traced by the men who had the 
instinct for the woods. They were as mysterious as those 
currents which flow like rivers through the yielding waters of 
the ocean. The path of the deer and the bear was beaten for 
man to follow in. The paleface who first made his way 
through those thickets, under the dim green light of the 
forest, listened fearful of the Indian, more dangerous to him 
than the wild animals. From time to time, far apart yet 
close enough to hold the thread of the trail, the palefaces 
would appear and disappear, till the wildcat and the chip- 
munk became accustomed to the sight. Then came a new 
thing after the moccasined traveller, the pack horse bearing 
his load of salt, carrying savor to the meats of the West. 
This precious freight must be taken at the cost of any danger 
and toil to the white men and women beyond the range. 
So the first drivers of the pack horse followed the path which 
the hunter and hunted had made. Rough and hard to 



126 ITbe Hntietam 

follow, it was fascinating with the witchery of the woods, 
aromatic with the odors of cedar and fern, that incense of 
the forest more exhilarating to those who have breathed it 
than the sweetest peifume. 

This trail which Washington had followed through the 
mountains was the basis of the great road over the Alle- 
ghanies. From the mountains to the seaboard, the way was 
less toilsome, as that part of the country was settled and 
under cultivation. 

A traveller who came to Hagerstown a few years after 
Washington's memorable visit, praised the celebrated 
valley, lying between the mountains, and extending from 
the Susquehanna on the north to Winchester on the south. 
He spoke of it as being richly watered by navigable streams, 
and capable of producing every article which was raised 
in the neighboring sections. It was, he said, inhabited 
chiefly by Germans and Dutch, an industrious race of men, 
and excellent farmers. It was by their exertions that this 
valley had been made to assume the appearance of a highly 
cultivated country, abounding in the conveniences, and 
some of the luxuries of life. 

Among these Germans was Dr. Christian Boerstler, who 
settled in Funkstown. He was one of those enlightened 
men who thought it better to take an active part in the life 
of a new country, even though rude and rough, than pas- 
sively to submit to the tyranny and taxation of the German 
princes. Beside his own family, a wife and six children, 
he brought seventy other families with him, and they settled 
for the most part about Jerusalem. He was a man of more 
than ordinary ability, and very much respected in his own 
country. He told his Prince, on leaving Germany, that 



Zhe BrlO^e at jfunfistown 127 

if he continued to treat his subjects like slaves, he would 
soon have none left to rule over. 

He was a valuable man for the new community, for he 
brought with him a great knowledge of agriculture. At his 
home in Jerusalem he cultivated flowers and fruits, kept 
bees, and made wine from his own vines. For many years 
he furnished the reading matter for the famous Gruber's 
Almanack, which was then published only in German ; and 
on all such sound agricultural topics as manures, clover, and 
plaster for the soil, he was considered the highest authority. 

One public work which he inaugurated, and in which 
he interested Nathanial Rochester, and other prominent 
men, has unfortunately perished. Together they had the 
road between Jerusalem and Hagerstown planted on each 
side with Lombardy poplars, making of it a regular alameda. 
It was so attractive that it was afterward continued from 
Hagerstown out on the western road as far as the Buck 
Tavern. By all these interests and industries that he 
encouraged, he was particularly useful, in counteracting 
the roving, unstable tendencies of the times. 

It was through this country, prosperous and well culti- 
vated, producing both foodstuffs and manufactured articles, 
that the gieat road from East to West passed, and it was 
the privilege of Funkstown to lie on this busy highway, 
and be stirred by the pulsing life which flowed over it. 
Until the railroads were built, the village resounded with 
the noise of its mighty movement. Armies of cattle and 
sheep, hogs and beeves trudged over the road, passenger 
coaches and mail stages flew over its level floor, and an 
endless train of freighters toiled over it, taking provisions 
and articles of trade from the seaboard to the West. 



128 JLhc antietam 

The drivers of these freight wagons were a class to them- 
selves. They loved the road with the enthusiasm which 
a free life awakens. Life spent in the open, fighting the 
forces of nature, breeds a great race not judged by intellec- 
tual standards but by the qualities of manhood. Only the 
early life of a country can produce these intrepid, resourceful 
men. It looks back to the heroes of its dawn and says, 
"There were giants in those days"; but they were only men 
of a larger mould, and greater stature, bred by their larger 
opportunities. They pass away as life becomes less strenu- 
ous. Such were the early settlers with their steadiness of 
nerve and physical strength: the hunters whose pursuits 
developed keen observation, dexterity, and activity; and 
such the cowboys of yesterday, living in great spaces, 
spending nights and days in the saddle, and afraid of neither 
man nor devil. Only the youth of a nation breeds them, 
and when the need for them is past, the race dies out. 

The early wagoners who took their teams into the rough- 
est places, dependent on their own resources to cope with 
every difficulty, were of this brotherhood. They were hardy, 
adventurous men who often camped under the stars, jour- 
neying hundreds of miles through winter snows and summer 
heat and floods. Their love for the road was so great that 
when the railroads came and the freight wagons were 
abandoned, they pined for the days that were gone. There 
was one old man who had for years driven his Conestoga 
wagon over the route. It was all of life to him, to travel 
the long road, pass and repass his old companions, and stop 
at his favorite wagon stands. When the railroads came 
and he was forced to put his wagon under a shed, and turn 
his horses to other work, he pined so for the familiar scenes 



^be Bri^ge at ifunhstown 129 

that he could not leave the road. So he broke stone for it, 
and in that way kept up his outdoor life on the scene of 
his old work, cooled by the breeze and warmed by the sun, 
as in the old days of wagoning. 

The wagons which these pioneers of trade took over the 
turnpike were of the famous Conestoga make. They were 
heavy, with broad wheels, hooded to keep out the weather. 
The bed of the wagon was boat-shaped, rising slightly at 
each end, and painted blue, with the exception of the upper 
side boards which were red. The white tops, rounded and 
gathered to a circle at the ends, suggested shaker bonnets. 
With a tar bucket for the wheels, a feed trough for the 
horses, and a bulldog for company, the outfit was complete. 
The six horses stepped out proudly, and from their necks 
sprang thin iron arches from which dangled the bells. 

The gear which the horses wore was very heavy. The 
hip straps were ten inches wide, and the back bands fifteen. 
The traces were heavy chains made up of short, thick links. 
It was a feat of strength to harness the teams, and many a 
tavern boy groaned at the task on a freezing winter morning. 
The wagon saddles, of thick wood, covered with black leather, 
were ready for the drivers ; and the wagoner sitting surveying 
the broad backs of his horses, as they stepped out on a clear, 
frosty morning, with the bright sun warming the hedges, 
and the birds singing gayly, was like the carter's lad of the 
old song, "As happy as a king." 

At night they put up at houses for wagoners, where the 
yards often held hundreds of animals. They fared roughly 
indoors as well as out, sleeping on the floors wrapped 
in their blankets, with their feet to great fires. But the 
old time wagon houses kept good tables, and plenty of 



I30 ^be antietam 

pure whiskey, so that their food and drink were of the 
best. 

There were eccentric characters among them, whose 
peculiarities were accentuated by their independent lives. 
One man always wore a full suit of buckskin. Another 
had a fancy for black horses, and would never drive any 
others. This wagoner had a deeply rooted distrust of banks 
and would never keep his money in one. As owing to his 
roving life he could not hide his stocking under the hearth- 
stone, he invented a savings bank of his own, by boring 
holes of the right size to hold his coins in blocks of wood. 
These he carefully plugged up, and carried about with him,. 
stuffed full of money. One would think these portable 
banks would have given him as much anxiety as the town 
institutions. One giant took a pride in having all his gears 
made a full inch wider than the regulation size, and as they 
were heavy enough of the usual pattern, the tavern boys 
groaned over handling them. 

They smoked big cigars, made in Pittsburg and called 
"Stogies," after their wagons; they swore like troopers, 
and exchanged wits like costers. Said one Breakiron to 
another called Puffenberger, with a good assortment of 
oaths, when they met in a narrow way and neither would 
turn out for the other: 

"My name is Breakiron, and I 'm as hard as my name. 
But yours is a windy name. " 

"Yes," said Puffenberger, with his own choice of exple- 
tives, "my name is a windy name, and there 's thunder in 
it!" 

Strange things happened to them on their trips. Once 
the snow on the mountains near Cumberland was dyed red 



^be Bribge at jfunF^stown 131 

as blood for miles, when a barrel of Venetian red rolled off 
its wagon, and scattered its contents in its downward flight. 
Once a wagon load of oysters was wrecked by some accident, 
and every one along the pike gathered to the feast. When 
something went wrong with a man's wagon, all the fra- 
ternity who came by stopped and helped him. Sometimes 
as many as twenty or thirty wagons were held up in this 
way. 

Sometimes a wagon yard would hold thirty six-horse 
teams on a single night, with a hundred mules from Ken- 
tucky, and a thousand hogs from Indiana. The amount 
of noise made by such a company of hogs was not soon 
forgotten by one who heard it. 

A Senator was quoted as saying, when the road was 
under discussion, that "hay stacks and corn stalks" would 
walk over it. His colleague, annoyed at such levity, said 
he could not imagine how corn stalks and hay stacks could 
walk over his bowling-green of a road. It was explained to 
his literal mind that they would walk over it in the shape of 
fat cattle and hogs, horses and mules, and the prophecy was 
fulfilled. People living to-day can remember when the 
wide turnpike between Boonsboro and Funkstown was level 
from fence to fence, and filled with a moving procession of 
teams and saddle horses, coaches and driven animals. As 
they pass now over the thread of road which goes down the 
middle of the old space, passing an occasional motor car 
or country team, they sigh for the days of its glory, when 
the great throng that travelled it went through the valley, 
and crossed the Antietam by its stone bridge. 

It is little wonder that men who spent their lives on 
the road left it with regret, and how they clung to its mem- 



132 Zbc antietam 

ories is shown in the story of the old wagoner who, after he 
turned farmer, kept his beloved Conestoga freighter under a 
shed, swept and clean, and carefully covered from the 
weather. The boys of the neighborhood were allowed to come 
and look at it, and hear his stories of wagoning; and old 
wagoners who visited him would renew their recollections 
of turnpike travel at the sight. 

The men who kept the taverns and wagon stands along 
the pike were often intelligent and well-informed, and had 
a good deal of influence in the community. Many of them 
were musicians, and a house where one could be sure of 
hearing the fiddle played, and a good song sung, was always a 
favorite with the wagoners. Like most men who lead out- 
of-door lives, they liked music, and nothing pleased them 
better than to pass an evening listening to familiar songs, 
and joining in a good chorus. In the same way the cow- 
boys of the West love their music around the camp-fire, 
and any one who plays to them is welcome, even if his in- 
strument is nothing better than the strident accordion. 
Woodsmen in lumber camps have almost always among their 
number one who can play the violin, and entertain the camp 
with gay or melancholy airs: and sailors, with their ditties 
and chanteys, have a musical folk-lore of their own. So it 
was characteristic of the journeying wagoners to love the 
heavenly maid, and a tavern where the host could play the 
old tunes on his violin was always a favorite. 

Among the most popular tavern keepers was an English- 
man called William Ashton, who kept a tavern in the west 
end of Funkstown. He was a great athlete, and was noted 
all over the country, from Virginia to Pennsylvania, for his 
feat of once having leapt clean over a Conestoga wagon 



^be Bribge at funkstown 133 

with the aid of a leaping pole. While he kept his tavern 
there he always had two teams on the road, hauling from 
Hagerstown to Terre Haute, in Indiana, a four months' 
journey. 

There were several taverns in Hagerstown, such as 
"The Swan," "The Bell," the "Lafayette Inn," which is 
still standing at the corner of South Potomac Street and the 
"Baltimore and Wheeling turnpike," or Baltimore Street, 
and the "Columbian Inn." This latter was attractively 
advertised as having a first-rate garden, well enclosed. But 
the wagoners preferred places outside of Hagerstown, which 
was a little too stylish for them. They preferred the more 
homely wagon stands and taverns of Funkstown and the 
inns on the turnpike to the west of Hagerstown. 

We might divide into the First, the Second, and the 
Third Estate, the different classes doing regular business 
on the National Road. To the last would belong the 
drovers, and all those taking herds of cattle, sheep, and hogs 
for long distances over it. Of the Second, would be the 
wagoners, whose freighters carried the trade of the country, 
East and West. The First would be easily represented by 
the stage drivers, carrying mails for the government, and 
the travelling public. 

There were various lines of stages, owned by companies 
and individuals. One of the most important was the Stock- 
ton line, and others were the People's line, the Good In- 
tent, and the June Bug. The latter was so called because 
it was prophesied of it that it would not last as long as the 
season of June bugs. The Good Intent was a temperance 
line, and the drivers had a song expressive of their good 
intentions, of which the chorus ran: 



134 ^be antictam 

For our agents and drivers. 

Are all fully bent 
To go for cold water, 

On line Good Intent. 
Sing, Go it, my Hearties, 

Cold water for me ! 

It is to be hoped that this somewhat chilly chorus heartened 
them up on a cold morning, though one would think they 
would have willingly exchanged for a cup of hot coffee. 

One of the drivers on the Good Intent, named Peter 
Burdine, had a turn for rhyming, and one of his jingles has 
survived him. It ran. 

If you take a seat on Stockton's Line, 

You are sure to be passed by Peter Burdine. 

Peter was in fact a famous driver, but he was passed on 
one occasion by a rival, who promptly retorted with this 
verse : 

Said Billy Willis to Pete Burdine, 

You had better wait for the Oyster Line. 

The point of this witticism is lost to-day, but no doubt 
Peter felt the sting of it. 

Many notable men were on the road. One of these was 
James Reeside, always wearing a scarlet waistcoat and tie. 
He was first a driver and afterwards a proprietor on the 
Stockton line. The story went that he was walking with a 
friend in Baltimore one day, and they paused before the 
window of a tailor's shop where a piece of scarlet cloth was 
displayed. His companion (Colonel Johnson, of Kentucky) 
remarked that it was the coaching color, and Reeside ought 
to be wearing it. 



ZEbc BribGC at jfunUstown 135 

"I '11 have a vest made of that piece if you will," said 
he. Reeside agreed, and they went in to order one apiece. 
But Reeside not only ordered a waistcoat, but a tie of the 
same color, and vowed that as long as he lived he would 
wear no others. He kept his word, and James Reeside, 
six feet five inches high, with his scarlet waistcoat and tie, 
and long drab overcoat, was one of the best known and 
most respected men on the road, and often seen both in 
Hagerstown and Funkstown. 

Another coaching character was Redding Bunting. He 
was a driver on the Stockton line, and taller by an inch than 
Reeside. He was considered one of the most trustworthy 
and resourceful men on the road, and made two famous 
trips after the railroad was begun. 

On a certain year the Presidential message was considered 
of such importance that it was thought it should reach the 
farthest limit of western travel as quickly as possible. To 
Red Bunting was entrusted the duty of seeing it carried to the 
end of the stage line, at the highest rate of speed. He went 
to Frederick, at which point the railroad ended, and where 
the message was delivered to him. Taking his seat beside 
the driver of the stage-coach, he directed the journey till 
they reached Wheeling, where the stage road ended. He 
urged the speed to its utmost, and the drive of two hundred 
and twenty-two miles was accomplished in twenty-three 
hours and a half. For this feat he was personally thanked 
by the President. 

On his second famous trip he took up his task at Cum- 
berland, to which point the railroad had come. This time 
he was charged with delivering the proclamation of war 
with Mexico. It was important to have the news known 



136 ^be Hntietam 

all over the country as early as possible. On this occasion 
Redding Bunting himself handled the reins, and made the 
trip of one hundred and thirty-one miles in twelve hours. 

These were, of course, record trips. It was customary all 
along the line to change horses every twelve miles, but to 
help the pace, where there were steep hills a pair of horses 
was kept at the foot in charge of a man called a postilion, 
who hitched them in front of the leaders and helped take the 
coach up the hill. Then they were unhitched, and waited for 
the next stage to come along. When travel was at its 
height, as many as thirty coaches would pass a given point 
in a day, fifteen in one direction and fifteen in the other. 

The houses for the entertainment of travellers along the 
National Road were excellent as a rule. Henry Clay, who 
was a constant traveller over it, had a great fondness for 
their country fare. He maintained that they set as good 
tables as could be found anywhere in the country, and 
especially delighted in the buckwheat cakes, with their 
beautiful gray just turned to a golden hue. 

A tavern anecdote has been preserved of another great 
man. General Jackson, who confounded the road with his 
simple tastes. He was obliged to stop at some country place 
along the line, and the people planned to entertain him 
with a banquet at the tavern. The tavern keeper himself 
waited upon him, to find out his preference for the bill of 
fare, and to his "What, sir, would you prefer for dinner?" 
received the astonishing answer, "Ham and eggs." This 
was too much for the host, who stammered a desire to do 
him more honor; but the General stoutly held to ham and 
eggs, and gave it as his opinion that there was no better 
dish, where the material was good. 



Zhc Brtbae at jfunketown 137 

This recalls a story of a breakfast to which, in the old 
days of San Francisco, a millionaire invited a party of 
friends, at the ancient and far famed Lick House. The 
gentlemen from the country prepared for a feast, dreaming 
of turbot and quails, broiled kidneys and chicken livers, 
when the man of millions calmly ordered sausage, saying 
there was nothing equal to good sausage for breakfast. 

Different houses had their specialties. One man was 
famous for his spring chickens and flannel cakes. Another 
for hot biscuits and coffee, and this man's popularity was 
well deserved, for nothing is more grateful to the tired travel- 
ler, after a night in the stage, than good, hot coffee with 
country cream, and nothing harder to find. Still another 
house supplied fried chicken and waffles, with real country- 
cured ham, one of the best dishes in Maryland. 

A number of the taverns along the National Road were 
kept by women, who by reason of their lonely state, or the 
trifling habits of the other sex, were forced to support them- 
selves. We may be sure they stood in awe of no man, no 
matter how high his station. There is a story told of a 
Chief Justice who was obliged to stop at a tavern in a small 
place along the road, and on whose table every day was set 
a savory roast pig. The dish was peifect of its kind, but 
after a while he was inclined to say, as other men have done, 
"Something too much of this, methinks!" So one day in 
magisterial tones he ordered the waitress to remove from 
his sight the too familiar pig. He reckoned without his 
hostess, for that determined woman appeared from the 
back premises, where she was superintending the judicial 
dinner, and sternly addressed him. 

"You are the Chief Justice," said she, "and run the 



138 Zbc Hntletam 

Court, but I am the chief cook and run this dining-room. 
That pig must stay" ; and it stayed. 

The taverns of Funkstown were not behind the rest in 
giving the traveller the best of Maryland fare, the country 
ham fit for an epicure, sweet and dry, and exquisitely 
flavored. The farmers' wives and daughters brought in 
their fat ducks and geese, chickens and turkeys, and there 
was plenty of good whiskey and cider from still and press. 

It was natural that the taverns should now become what 
the mills had been, meeting places where the news of the day 
was heard and exchanged, and where meetings were ap- 
pointed for the transaction of business, and where taxes were 
collected. We see in old newspapers many notices, appoint- 
ing taverns through the country for the latter purpose. 

The railroad came, and the feelings of all the turnpike 
men were bitter over the change. Stage drivers and wagon- 
ers, tavern keepers and pike-boys, saw their occupation 
gone. The stage driver could no more be an autocrat in his 
small kingdom but must move on a level with other men. 
The wagoner must turn farmer, or keep a house of entertain- 
ment in some quiet place. The tavern keeper must see the 
decline of his trade, and dull days follow stirring ones. The 
refrain of an old song has come down to us expressing their 
feeling at the new order of things: 

Now, all you jolly wagoners who own good wives. 
Go home to your farms, and there spend your lives. 
When the corn is all cribbed and the small grain is good, 
You '11 have nothing to do but curse the railroad. 



Chapter XIII 

The Bridge at Hagerstown 

nPHE bridge next along the Antietam above Funkstown 
* was Hager's bridge, just outside of Hager's-Town, to 
give it its old spelling. It was neither one of the oldest, being 
built twenty-five years after the turnpike bridge at Funks- 
town, nor one of the best; but it was near the town which 
was the centre of activity for the valley — Hagerstown, a 
place known all over the civilized and much of the uncivilized 
world. It would be hard to go anywhere, to travel to the 
remotest parts of the earth, and not find some one who was 
born there, or had lived there, or been there at some time 
and known its people. At a Mexican bullfight, in the Trans- 
vaal, on the Panama Canal, in China or Japan, Chili or Peru, 
mention the name of Hagerstown, and it strikes familiarly 
upon some ear. 

It was founded by a German, Jonathan Hager, spoken 
of in the old newspapers of his time as a "German adven- 
turer. " The term "adventurer " had not the meaning then 
which attaches to it now. Then it was complimentary. 
One who adventured was a man who braved danger and 
took risks. It is an instance of the constant changes taking 
place in a language that it has come to such a different 
meaning. The time of the adventurer of the frontier has 

^39 



I40 Zbc an tie tarn 

passed, and it is now a sorry term, and implies that 
adventurous ways are ways of darkness. 

Jonathan Hager was a man of good sense and judg- 
ment. He had the qualities which make men trusted and 
leaving his native country he went out into the wilderness 
to find, not only freedom to worship God, as did the northern 
pilgrims, but also to keep the money he made instead of hav- 
ing to give it back to the state in taxes. He attracted 
other men to him, and a strong colony of Germans settled 
in the valley of the Antietam. The titles of his land grants 
show him for a matter-of-fact man. He called them by such 
plain names as "Stony Batter," "New York," "Hager's 
Choice," and "Brightwell." On one of these tracts he 
founded the town, and named it, in honor of his wife, "Eliza- 
beth-Hager's-Town. " 

There were so many German settlers in the country 
surrounding the town, that the German tongue was spoken 
on the streets, preached in the pulpits, and printed in early 
newspapers and the Almanack; and Hagerstown is to-day 
a land of sauerkraut and sausages, of Schweitzer cheese 
and good rye bread, of beer and pretzels. There is a little 
shop in the heart of town which is a little Germany. Its 
window is full of the German colored pottery which Burne- 
Jones loved. There are bits of toys so cheap and plentiful 
that enough can be bought for five cents to make the heart 
of a child dance for joy, and his brain addled with arithmetic. 
The writer once took such a little boy there one morning, 
with that magnificent sum to spend. He wandered about 
and looked at the pistols (two for a penny), at the engines 
and cars (a penny apiece) , and at the more expensive toys 
costing as much as two and three cents each. The benign 



Zbc Bribge at IbaGcrstown hi 

old German woman who waited on him, with her white apron 
girt about her ample waist, produced these wonders, but even 
her calm temper at last gave way over his confusion, and 
when the little boy was last seen she was somewhat sharply 
insisting on his laying out the seemingly unlimited five cents 
according to her advice. 

It is these touches of little life which show the heart 
of a town. At the High School exercises there was always on 
the programme the funny boy, whose inimitable drollery 
took the form of German dialect; and it was so perfect be- 
cause "the old people," his grandparents, really talked 
English in just that way when they used the language. 

The houses with their stoops, flush with the sidewalks, 
their little gardens in the rear; the fashion of living up- 
stairs over the shop ; the prevalence of Lutheran and German 
Reformed congregations, all tell of a strong underlying 
German stock. The famous Gruber's Almanack, still 
printed yearly in the two languages, was originally a German 
publication. The rabbit is the patron saint of Easter, and 
at Eastertide the windows are full of bunnies, eating carrots, 
sitting on nests, and in all sorts of droll and quaint attitudes. 

In Jonathan Hager's day the town was a busy one. 
Spinning and weaving, dyeing and coverlet-making, kept 
many of its women busy. There were chair-makers and 
clock-makers, saddlers and cabinet-makers, hand-workers 
in every trade. Because of the bad roads and difficulties of 
transportation, almost everything necessary for living was 
made on the spot. But that luxuries were brought in is 
shown from the quantities of old mahogany furniture of 
English make still to be unearthed at sales, the Sheffield 
plate and silver table pieces, the Wedgwood platters and 



142 ^be antictam 

lustre pitchers, and the brass candlesticks, which still make 
Hagerstown a happy hunting ground for the collector. 

Life in the country houses was on a luxurious scale. The 
stables were full of horses, and the tables covered with good 
things to eat, for the Marylander has always been noted as a 
judge of good living. Whiskey flowed freely, to such an 
extent indeed that many a jolly squire found himself mort- 
gaged to his last acre. 

The two elements which subsisted side by side, the Ger- 
man and the English, were entirely different in spirit. There 
was a certain burgher thrift and comfort in one, while 
elegance and extravagance marked the other. To this may 
be attributed the fact which is very noticeable in looking 
over old newspapers of a century or more ago. The names 
of the English families have very largely disappeared from 
the community and their descendants are scattered far 
and wide. They are met with on the California coast, the 
Colorado mountains, and the Oregon cattle ranches. Like 
the English of to-day, they follow the frontier. 

The Germans, on the other hand, remained and prospered. 
In reading these old records, name after name is seen which is 
familiar in Hagerstown to-day. Families will often be found 
living where their great-grandparents did. The old trades 
are carried on, and could those early German settlers have 
looked forward down the years, they would have seen their 
great-great-grandchildren living where they established their 
households, reaping as they sowed, and gathering as they 
planted. They would see them better clad, better educated, 
enjoying more advantages than in those rude early days, 
but still with the same good German thrift and industry. 
The blue-eyed young man, fair as a native-born Teuton, 




B 



JLhc Bribge at Ibaserstown 143 

carries on the old business; the handsome young woman 
brings up a large and healthy family in the old house, with 
its arched, fan-lighted door, to play in the same halls and 
garden where her father and his sisters and brothers played. 

Walking one day in the churchyard of Stratford-on- 
Avon with a Hagerstown man, he noted the inscriptions on 
the old flagstones and commented on the number of Wash- 
ington County people who had borne those names. So 
many of them used to be near Hagerstown, the Dalls and 
Darbys, the Lawrences and Buchanans, and many others 
now scattered wide over the United States. Hardly any of 
these names survive in the town, except as they are seen on 
the flagstones (like those of the English churchyard) of the 
Episcopal cemetery, neglected and half obliterated. 

For many years the life of Hagerstown pursued the even 
tenor of its way. Its citizens were always ready to flare 
into intense patriotism, and become impassioned advocates 
in a Presidential election ; but in the main they were absorbed 
in the local interests of the valley. It was still the outcome 
of its environment, limited by its geographical situation. 
Its connection with the outside world gradually increased, 
as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake 
and Ohio Canal came into operation. Both of these institu- 
tions were well sponsored, for the first stone for the bed of the 
railroad was put in place by the venerable Charles Carroll 
of CarroUton, and the first spade of earth for the canal turned 
by John Quincy Adams. These outlets helped it to wider 
interests. But Hagerstown was destined to a great awaken- 
ing, which was to make a vital change in the character of the 
town. One hesitates to touch even lightly on the subject 
of the Civil War, for a volume would not be large enough to 



144 ^be antietam 

hold the record of its happenings in Hagerstown alone ; but 
a reference to it must be made in order to understand the 
development of the town. 

At first the war pressed lightly on Maryland, which 
was mainly a highway for the passage of bodies of troops. 
Numbers of soldiers went through it, and dwellers by country 
roads became used to the sight of marching men, streaming 
down the pikes and over the bridges. The people of Hagers- 
town felt the intense excitement of the time, and quiet 
Williamsport on the Potomac was the scene of one of the 
earliest engagements of the war. 

As time passed the appearance of the troops changed. 
Soldiers of the regular army gave way to volunteers, men 
equally in earnest, but without the discipline and smartness 
of the regulars. News of the battles reached Hagerstown, 
but there was always great uncertainty as to their real issue, 
the truth being often withheld for the sake of its influence 
on the public. After a brilliant Confederate victory those 
prudent people whose sympathies were always with the 
winning side hoisted their colors, and ran about wear- 
ing red-and-white ties. As the fighting pressed nearer 
home, gray uniforms as well as blue were seen on the 
streets. There were encounters, and skirmishes, heads 
out of windows, hastily drawn back as the firing came too 
close. 

At times Northern officers were stationed in the town, 
and a very charming society sprang up. The Southern 
belles tried their witchery on the Northerners, and wounded 
many victims. They were great partisans and ardent 
rebels. Soldiers patrolling the streets would see lovely 
visions in hoop-skirts and dainty bonnets coming toward 



Z\)c IBribge at Ibagerstown ms 

them, with heads turned scornfully away, and skirts drawn 
aside as if from contamination. 

Even honeymoons were affected. One couple spent 
theirs in Baltimore under unusual conditions. The groom, 
a notorious book-worm, who was on parole and could not 
show himself on the street, spent his days in studious 
enjoyment, while the bride went about with her friends in 
search of amusement. 

Sometimes Confederate troops held the town, always 
showing the wear and tear of war in their worn clothing. 
A shabby youth comes up the hill from the Marsh Run. He 
is of one of the best families of the South, courtly as he is 
brave, and engaging as he is shabby. He is on his way to 
call on some Southern ladies, and determined to have some 
sign of the gentleman about his attire, he has spent an hour 
on his knees by the Run, washing out his handkerchief and 
drying it in the sun, so as to have it daintily clean. 

Distinguished men and memorable figures passed and 
repassed before the people of Hagerstown. One of the most 
striking was General Custer riding down the street, brave as 
a lion, with his flowing sun-gold locks, wearing a velvet 
jacket on whose lapel was embroidered the guidon of his 
troops. His was a type not often seen, the dandy and gal- 
lant, always playing to the galleries and craving applause, 
yet in the final moment of accomplishment a leader of men, 
with all the wild dash and courage of the fighting Anglo- 
Saxon. 

Like the visions seen in a kaleidoscope, the pictures 
were constantly changing. The magnificent armies of the 
North, the tattered armies of the South, came and went. 
After the thunders of Antietam the town was filled with 



146 ^be antietam 

wounded; people drove to the battlefield and saw the ter- 
rors of war, the accumulated suffering of thousands. They 
became oppressed with the greatness of the struggle, and its 
near approach. Then came the armies of the South march- 
ing by thousands toward Gettysburg to the wild strains of 
"Dixie," one of the most thrilling airs that ever led men 
into battle. After that terrible fight Hagerstown lay in 
perilous case, between two armies, the Confederates to the 
west, the Federals to the east. The long line of Lee's 
watch fires reached along the ridge from Hagerstown to 
the river. A battle seemed inevitable, but once more 
Hagerstown escaped. 

The impoverished Southern army was now fain to supply 
itself by force. Up to this time the rights of property had 
been respected. Now the case was desperate. The valley 
of Virginia was exhausted, its crops consumed, its soil 
trodden into sterility. Maryland realized that it must 
now pay tribute and farmers ran their horses off to the 
mountains for safety, and merchants hid their goods. 

One day a weary and dusty body of men rode into the 
town, and dropped from their horses to the sidewalk in front 
of the tavern where the stages came in with the mails. The 
owner of the stages, whose old stone house stood on the 
opposite corner, saw them and guessed them to be Mosby 
and his men. He strolled across and fell into conversation 
with them, and invited them over to his house for a mint 
julep. The very name of a mint julep rises like perfume to 
the nostrils of the Southerner, and the tired and thirsty men 
followed him without parley. The son, a young lad to whom 
war was a great game and full of excitement, was sent down 
into the garden for the mint. The raiders rested in the cool 



Zhc Bnt)Ge at Ibagcrstown 147 

house, and refreshed themselves with the fragrant julep; 
but the boy, who had sent in the mint by a young negress, 
was running down the Funkstown pike as fast as his legs 
would take him, and turned back the stages just outside of 
Funkstown at the bridge, and saved his father's horses for 
that time at least. 

The crucial moment for Hagerstown now came. On a 
June morning General McCausland with fifteen hundred 
men, dirty and worn beyond any yet seen, siillen and danger- 
ous, rode up the Sharpsburg pike, down Potomac Street to 
the Square, and took possession of the town. At the rumor 
of their coming numbers of people fled, for it was known 
that they were in grim earnest, and ready to carry out any 
threat without mercy. 

The men were drawn up on the streets and kept under 
arms, for it was known that a body of Northern troops was 
not far away. McCausland sent for the officials of the town, 
with the demand that it furnish him at once with twenty 
thousand dollars in money, and fifteen hundred suits of 
clothing for his men. All of the town officials had taken 
flight, with the one exception of the Treasurer. He appeared 
before the General with a friend, and to the demand for 
money promised to do what he could to raise it, but the 
clothing he said it was impossible to furnish, as the shops 
had been practically stripped of their goods. He was told 
that money and clothes must be forthcoming within one 
hour, or Hagerstown would be burned to the ground. 

The unhappy gentleman went off to consult with all the 
most influential men he could find, and they determined to 
satisfy the demand as far as it was possible. Again the 
Treasurer appeared before the General, and told him the 



148 Z\)c antietam 

money would all be paid, but the clothing for fifteen hundred 
men could not be procured, it was an impossibility. 

"Then, by the Living God," cried McCausland, "I'll 
burn the town. " 

Again the Treasurer set off to try to save Hagerstown. 
The man whose influence in the community at that time 
was paramount, was ill and crippled. He was the President 
of the Hagerstown Bank, wealthy as wealth was counted in 
those days, a strong man and used to dealing with men. He 
was the only one who, it was felt, could cope with the situa- 
tion, but he was unable to go so far as the Market House. 
McCausland, after some trouble, was induced to come down 
to see him at the Court House, and listen to what he had to 
say. 

Ill and disabled as he was, the invalid, helped by his 
negro body servant who never left him, made his painful 
way to the Court House on crutches, and met the stern and 
irritable General. All the tact and subtlety of the sick man 
were employed to mollify McCausland. He represented that 
if the town were burned for its failure to do the impossible, 
it would injure many warm friends of the South, and accom- 
plish nothing good. The money would be raised among 
the Hagerstown banks at once, and as much clothing as 
could be collected would be turned over. At last the General 
softened, and agreed to the terms if they were carried out 
within three hours, foi he was anxious to get away as 
quickly as possible. Then there was a running to and fro, 
and the names of many citizens were signed to the notes on 
the banks; and such a motley collection of garments as 
never was seen before was brought into the Court House 
and piled upon the floor. From shops and private houses. 



^be BribQC at Ibagerstowu 149 

suits new and old, ragged and handsome, bales of cloth, shoes 
and hats, everything that could be brought together was 
poured out as a libation to the God of War, and must have 
caused almost as much amusement and dismay as pleasure 
in the minds of those who fell heirs to it. 

The money was handed over, a receipt taken for it, and 
for the clothing, and the soldiers rode out of Hagerstown 
as rapidly as possible. The town was unharmed, only 
saddled with a debt which it took years to wipe out, but 
saved from the fate of Chambersburg, which later was 
burned by McCausland for its failure to supply his demands. 

The war came to an end, and Hagerstown had passed 
safely through its perils and dangers, but the spirit of the 
community was entirely changed by it. Maryland men 
had never been extensive slaveholders; they were kindly 
and even indulgent masters, and many of them had always 
been opposed to that form of property. But the loss of such 
slaves as they had made the cultivation of their fertile 
farms and manors so much less profitable, that many land- 
holders were drawn to the town, to try for new channels of 
activity. Many mills along the streams which had been 
closed at the time of the Southern raids into Maryland were 
never reopened. Manufactures on a larger scale were 
established, the town grew, and from being in its character 
something of an overgrown village, came forward with this 
wider development to take its place among cities. 

To-day it has passed far beyond the time of adventure 
and romance. Many mills still turn along the Antietam, 
but they are small industries now. Steam and electricity 
have outstripped water power, and the murmur of the mill- 
wheel is drowned in the noise of machinery. There are 



ISO ^be Hntietam 

many factories on the outskirts of the town, and the noon 
hour lets loose every sort of whistle. The deep, musical, 
organ tones of one set an example of what such things can 
be. Other ambitious ones shriek through a whole scale of 
piercing notes, and the more commonplace blare and scream. 
But the surroundings of the town are still as lovely as when 
William Faux drove down the mountain from the Gap 
near Boonsboro, and saw it surrounded with small moun- 
tains, and admired its Dutch gothic spires. The Blue 
Ridges give it a beautiful setting, and fine mountain air. 
Looking down from some high hill, in the evening light when 
the sun has set in a clear sky, suffusing it with gold, one sees 
the town like a long crescent, one tip lying beside the old 
Crawford Works, the other resting by the egg-shaped dome 
of the Fair buildings. Softened by the light smoke from 
household fires, with electric lights glimmering out in 
bright, star-like points, it is a fair sight and the men who 
founded it would have rejoiced if they could have seen the 
end of their adventure. 

Among the traces which the English colonists left behind 
them, are some old-country words still used by their de- 
scendants. The word ' ' poke " is heard throughout the valley 
in its meaning of a small bag, and the market people will 
offer to put one's peaches "in a poke. " But a more unusual 
survival in the vernacular of the day is the expression, "the 
dik, " used by Hagerstown men of all ages. Speaking of 
their small-boy days of bathing in the Marsh Run, it is 
always alluded to as "bathing in the dik," though no one 
could tell why. It was just "the dik," of course, and 
everybody called it so. But happening upon a description 
of the earliest days of England, in an allusion to Romney 



Zhc Bridge at Ibaaeretown 15 ^ 

Marsh, the very same word was found, used in describing 
the channels of water cutting through the Marsh, which were 
called "the diks," thus explaining the Hagerstown boys' 
word, and proving its long descent. 

Every year for a week in October is held the Great 
Hagerstown Fair, which makes the name of Hagerstown 
famous throughout the country. The town is given up to it, 
swamped, every interest submerged in the rush of it. An 
immense tide of humanity pours in from the neighboring 
States. The stock farms of the West send their exhibits 
of sullen bulls, powerful and resentful, and their cows and 
calves. Goats, sheep, and pigs assemble in pens, and poultry 
of all classes fills a great hall. A hill is given up to farm 
machinery, and all the latest inventions for economic farm 
labor are shown there. The racing stables are full, and 
trotting sulkies and running horses continuously circle 
around the track. 

These are the serious matters of the Fair. But that 
wonderful fringe hangs tawdry and tinselled on its edges that 
follows the skirts of every fair the world around. The 
mountebanks and tumblers, the gypsy girls and swart 
Italians, the thousand cheats and shams by which people 
are tricked out of their money, are all here, making the 
picturesque, the speciously gay and enticing features of the 
Fair, for simple people. 

It is not a great selling fair, like the horse fairs of 
Normandy, the autumn fair at Munich, the Paris fair where 
the provinces send their sausages and hams, their olives 
and all the produce which tickles the palates of Parisians; 
nor like the great Nijni-Novgorod, where the hand-workers 
of great areas display their needlework, their embroideries, 



152 ZTbe Hntictam 

their rugs and metal work, for the world's market. It is 
rather an exhibitor's fair where the produce of the county 
is displayed, and where the farmer sees the latest inventions 
in farm implements, and the highest results of stock breeding. 

It opens on Tuesday morning, a cool October day with 
the air like wine. The trees along the drive are like flaming 
torches, scarlet and ruddy gold. The crowd is happy and 
orderly, the animals in their stalls are sleek and impudent, 
their keepers cheerful and jolly, sitting about on the straw 
or going around with buckets in hand. There is always the 
parade of buckets in this quarter. Little boys cut about with 
yard sticks and whips in hand, full of joy and impishness. 

Wednesday comes, and the crowd grows. The trains 
come in with heavy loads, and the sights in the streets begin 
to be amusing. A company of soldiers is come to make one 
of the sights of the Fair. The soldier boys take the town, 
exciting the boys and girls. Such scenes as this take place: 
A train comes in with its load of pleasure seekers. The 
soldiers, mostly very young and cheeky, line up on each side 
of the narrow pavement, and the passengers have to pass 
between, to a running accompaniment. When it is the fair 
sex, such cries as "Oh, what a peach!" "Did you ever!" 
"Oh, my!" "Get on to her, boys!" are called up and down 
the line. The women take it according to temperament. 
The very young ones blush, and look perfectly delighted. 
Some giggle, some set up their heads and look scornful, some 
suffer torments of embarrassment. The boys repeat their 
cries of delight. Even elderly women are greeted with 
respectful enthusiasm. Young men are slapped on the 
back. Then on a sudden the fun breaks up, the soldiers 
lock arms, and march off down the street. 



CEbe Bridge at Ibagerstown 153 

Here comes a group of Virj^inians, sporting men in riding 
togs, well pleased with thf^mselves and with everything 
about them. One is young, blue-eyed, merry, and impudent, 
making up to the girls, and amusing his companions. The 
others laugh at him and with him. A tandem comes by, 
Virginia again, entered for the Horse Show. All the smartest 
horses and riders of the sporting class come from over the 
border. The crowd increases, the town begins to look 
trampled and untidy. The stream of life pours and pours 
down the street to the Square, and the Fair Ground. Fakirs 
cry their wares, cab drivers shout for fares as they drive 
standing. 

And on the grounds the rush goes on, the dancers smile, 
the people of the booths all struggle for notice, and make 
frantic bids for audiences. The ring-and-knife booths tempt 
the little boys, who want a knife for a nickel badly. Here are 
"hot sausages," with a roll, cooked while you wait; and 
the candy makers' booths, where the men are dressed like 
French cooks, with white caps. The country boys and girls 
are a sight worth seeing; fresh -colored and awkward, 
and neat as pins. It is the great time of the year for 
them. Two or three bands play, the racers fly round and 
round the track, tight-rope walkers do their spider- 
tricks, and the baby elephant pulls his sheet about him, 
and lies down to pleasant dreams. But this is only 
Wednesday, 

Thursday comes, the great day of the Fair, and incredible 
crowds pour into the town, hour after hour. It is a great 
river of humanity, never ending. Old and young, gentle 
and simple, white and colored, crowd and thrust and elbow. 
They pour into the grand stand early in the day, so as to be 



154 ^be antictam 

sure of seats. Yet outside on the roadway, the artery of 
the Fair Ground, the dense, packed, determ-'ned horde 
struggles on, wedged tight, so that if one man moves, he 
moves twenty with him. Impossible to call to friends across 
the mass of hats, the shoving shoulders. Whips crack, 
yardsticks flourish, teasing toys whiz about one's face. 
Inflated pigs, inflated sausages squeal and collapse. The 
crowd in the main hall moves like a river. The poultry 
exhibit is thronged. The refined and weary take refuge in 
the art exhibit, in the hope of getting more space and air. 
The grand stand is packed, for Thursday is the day of the 
big purses and the star day of the Horse Show. And like a 
three-ringed circus, one knows not where to look, for beside 
these two events the performers opposite the stand do their 
stunts. The balloon ascends, the high diver shoots down- 
ward through the air. The Virginia girls drive in the show 
ring, slim and well groomed and straight as young pine 
trees. They wear high hats, and are very sporting in ap- 
pearance. Later they ride their jumpers in, and take the 
hurdles, first riding their thoroughbreds slowly up and 
down in the sunlight. Round and round the track go the 
jockeys in silks, and the numbers show out the time of the 
race. Always during the course of the Fair some sulky is 
disabled or some jockey thrown. The crowd is sorry, but the 
Fair goes on. Pick him up and carry him off. The little 
boys suck candy and slap you on the back just as merrily, 
though in the hospital near-by some one lies with broken 
bones. It is one of the features of the Fair. By night, such 
a jaded and weary town! — strewn with papers and peanut 
shells, with tags of ribbons and Fair badges, all the dregs 
and leavings of the great day. The gate-keepers count their 



Ebe Brit)0C at IbaGcretown 155 

money far into the night. It was the biggest day ever 
known at the Fair. • 

Friday comes, a good, rational day. The great per- 
spiring, pushing mass is not there, only a healthy crowd on 
pleasure bent. The fakirs begin to take down their tents. 
Animals move out of their stalls for the homeward march 
down country roads, or the trip by train to distant States. 
Pigs get obstinate, and make up their little minds which 
way they want to go, to the delight of the bystanders, and 
the rage of their drivers. The cattle march out with dignity, 
and horses frisk as they move into the sunlight. Only 
the odds and ends of the Fair go on, but it is the day when 
school children go in free, so there is still a gay crowd. 
There are congratulations, jubilations, merrymaking, as the 
Fair dies out; something to look back upon for a year, 
something to look forward to for a lifetime. For the Fair- 
seekers begin when infants in arms, and come gray-headed 
and bent, as full of the wonder of it as ever. Even now, 
men remember when it was little more than a country 
picnic where the farmers gathered with their wives and 
children, and the races were run by men riding their own 
horses. 

It is a far cry back to the days of Jonathan Hager, when 
he planted Hagerstown by the banks of the Antietam. He 
saw it take root and grow, and he died on the banks of the 
stream, where he was superintending the moving of logs 
to be used in building the German Reformed church in 
Hagerstown. One fell on him, and crushed him instantly. 
So he was buried, and Jonathan Hager, his son, took his place 
in the community. He too was a brave man, and fought 



156 Zbc Hntictam 

in the Revolutionary War, was imprisoned in the dungeons 
of HaHfax for two years, came home at last, and married the 
beautiful Mary Orndorff. He lived a life of mingled use- 
fulness and adventure, as did his father, and died young. 
Their descendants are living in Hagerstown to-day. 

It is a pity that of all the bridges over the Antietam the 
least attractive is the one at Hager's mill. The water 
roars over the mill-dam above it, and boys sit and fish from 
the coping, as they have done for generations; but it is not 
so pleasing as the others. The mill beside it is still in opera- 
tion. Some unfortunate memories attach to the spot. 
Not only because of the death of Colonel Hager at the saw- 
mill which the present one replaces, but in the mill which 
now stands, a mysterious murder was committed, the truth 
about which has never been known. The body of a man 
was found lying on the floor, done to death, and no one 
knew how he came there. The master miller at the time 
the death occurred was believed to have been guilty, but 
after standing trial in Frederick was acquitted. 



Chapter XIV 

The New Bridge and the Bridge at Old Forge 

THE next bridge up the stream from Hagerstown is a 
small but pretty one of two arches, on the road which 
goes from Hagerstown to the mountain by way of Cavetown 
and Smithsburg. It is always spoken of as the bridge on 
the Cavetown turnpike, or at Bridgeport. It is a sociable 
little bridge with a log house close to it where the tolls are 
collected, and where neighbors always seem to be passing 
the time of day. Children run up and down the road and 
chickens play about. Near the toll-gate a few houses seem 
to be trying to make the beginning of a village, such as so 
often springs up along a Maryland turnpike, strung for a 
distance along the wayside. Where the creek curves away 
from the bridge is an old house, two-storied, long and flat, 
with quaint green-bordered windows set in its white walls, 
which seems to have come right out of a Kate Greenaway 
picture book. And just across the bridge an old log house 
and a small stone building, very solid and substantial, 
complete a charming group, which relieves the tedium of a 
rather monotonous turnpike. 

This is the bridge they called New in its youth, and whose 
title clung to it after it was quite respectably old. Curiously 
enough, the predecessor of this stone bridge was also called 

157 



158 Zbc antietam 

New, being spoken of in the old records as far back as 1823 
as the "New Bridge on the Charlton Gap road." The 
present bridge, which was built in 1830, by Silas Harry, as its 
tablet sets forth, has a certain trim neatness, and is much 
more youthful in appearance than the next one up the 
stream, which is in part sixty years its junior. 

There was an advertisement in the Hagerstown paper, 
the year this bridge was completed, for a schoolmaster to 
teach the school near the New Bridge, and asking for one 
who could teach in both German and English, showing that 
the German element was strong in this neighborhood. 

About three quarters of a mile up the creek as the ciow 
flies, but apparently much farther on account of the many 
windings and loops made by the stream, is a bit of old 
Antietam worth a special trip to see. It used to be known 
as John Wolfersberger's ford, and beside it was the "Paper 
Mill of John Rohrer, lying near the Marsh. " It is now called 
Trovinger's mill. To reach it one leaves the dusty turn- 
pike to follow a country road. The creek runs between 
hills which shut it in, and the rest of the world out, and the 
ford seems miles away from Hagerstown, instead of being 
within a short drive of it. 

Just at the ford is the old mill, a building so ancient and 
hoary that the stones are loosening in its walls. A tablet 
gives the date of its erection, 177 1. It is a two-story build- 
ing, long and low. The trees droop their branches down 
over its peaked roof, and on one side a crazy-looking 
gallery runs the whole length of the second story. The 
water arch is directly under the middle of the building. 
Beside the broad stream with its lapping waters, shut snugly 
in by the hills, this old quiet place, with its venerable mill, 



^be mew Bribge 159 

has the air of being one hundred miles away from modern 
towns, and one hundred years behind these busy days. The 
water shdes gently by, a team comes splashing through 
the ford, and the murmuring of the mill embodies in its 
sound the soothing influences of the spot. 

At a little distance from the water is a group of farm- 
houses, and a level spot of green meadow. Somewhere here, 
about two hundred yards from the mill, and between the 
mill and the farmhouses, history says, was once a log church. 
More than a hundred years have passed since it was de- 
stroyed, so that only a dim tradition exists of the place where 
it stood. It was called "Antietam Church," and was the 
earliest place of worship of the German Lutherans in this 
region, and so far as is known it was the first church of any 
kind to be built in the valley. It was made with loopholes 
in the walls, so that it could be used as a place of defence 
against the Indians, and on the banks of the Antietam prayers 
were offered and hymns sung for the first time in the history 
of the county, in a building dedicated for public worship. 

Here it existed and struggled for forty years. Pastors 
came to it, with quaint German names, serving many par- 
ishes and preaching in them by turns. Pastor Haushihl 
came from Frederick, and following him Pastor Schwerdt- 
feger, and the older and younger Kurtz. There was Pastor 
Wildbahn, of whom it is recorded that he sang most beauti- 
fully, and in Germany had been the leader of a choir. He 
was also a gifted writer. And for two years as a supply, 
there preached here the distinguished Frederick Augustus 
Muhlenberg, of the eminent Muhlenberg family, who were 
noted for their work in the Lutheran Church in its early days 
in America. It was after his service here that he became 



i6o ^be antietam 

a member of the Continental Congress, and afterward a 
Speaker of the House of Representatives. After him came 
one Pastor Young, who came to this country as a Hes- 
sian soldier, and was ordained after the war was over, 
as were quite a number of his fellows. All these pious 
men preached and taught in this secluded spot beside the 
Antietam. 

We find from its history that the congregation had its 
troubles and differences. There was dissension over the 
younger Kurtz. For some reason he was not agreeable to 
the people, who petitioned to be served by the elder. It 
was during this period of discontent that Dr. Muhlenberg 
came to minister to them. From the time of the first settle- 
ment of the country until it was disturbed and unsettled 
by the War of Independence, the congregation met and wor- 
shipped here, but there was a significant sentence written of 
it by a pastor at that trying time. He said: "They now 
consist of from fifty-five to sixty families, many of whom 
with respect to their spiritual welfare were thoroughly 
ruined by the late war, so that little improvement is to be 
expected of them. " 

The tract on which the church stood was named, in the 
fashion of the times, "God Save the Church." After the 
war, and when the congregation had worshipped here for 
forty years, it was determined to build a new church in 
another place. The land on which Antietam church stood, 
was sold, with the exception of one half-acre on which 
stood the church and the giaveyard; for there were already 
graves made beside it, with names and dates carved on the 
stones, which should have been sacredly preserved. In the 
deed of sale a reservation was made, that there should be 



^be IRew 3vibQC i6i 

a right of passage through the land, to be kept open, free 
and clear forever, to the site of the church. 

The new church was built on another farm. There was a 
touch of human nature about the naming of it which makes 
one smile. Two sites were offered, and in order to settle be- 
tween them, two young men, one of each family contending 
for the honor, drew lots. One was named Peter Beard 
and the other Michael Stephey. The lot fell to Peter, and 
so the new church was named St. Peter's Church. Had the 
lot fallen to Michael, St, Michael would have been its Patron 
Saint ; but the time of the sword was passed, and as the need 
of founding it upon a rock was evident, it was well that the 
lot fell to Peter. 

The new church was a fine one. It was built of logs and 
had a gallery running around three of its inner walls, with a 
goblet-shaped pulpit and a sounding board overhead. Best 
of all, it had a pipe organ, to add strength and sweetness to 
the singing of the choir. 

But the case of the old church by the Antietam was sad. 
A bare half-acre was left of "God Save the Church, " and its 
name might now seem to have been prophetic. The build- 
ing was pulled down and the logs put to various uses. 
Worse than this, reverence for the graves wore away, and 
the tombstones were gradually abstracted to use in making 
walls and culverts. In time not a single trace remained of 
this oldest landmark of the Lutheran Church in the Hagers- 
town valley, and there is nothing to tell us just where it 
stood. What should have been preserved as a revered relic 
of those earliest days is entirely lost. The congregation sur- 
vived its Laodicean lapse, and became once more strong and 
spiritual, but the poor records of the dead were lost forever. 



i62 ZTbe antietam 

There is much to interest one in the study of these early- 
German congregations, the Reformed and Lutherans, the 
Baptists, Bunkers, and Mennonites. They were one of the 
strongest influences in estabhshing the character of the hfe 
of the valley, and to-day their customs are indelibly im- 
pressed upon it. It would take a theologian to tell of their 
differences of faith, but fundamentally they were inspired by 
the same desire, to get back to the plain word of God, as 
taught in the Bible, and to worship in sincerity and with 
simplicity. As the ceremony and pomp of religion has been in 
every country the inspiration of art and architecture, so the 
want of it left these worshippers with undeveloped aesthetic 
tastes. As their beliefs and practices were severely simple, so 
their places of worship were unadorned. At first, seeing one of 
their old stone churches, without tower or spire, with neither 
Gothic windows, nor symbolical ornament, they have a look 
of incompleteness. They stand in country places, massive 
and oblong, with plain windows of clear glass. They might 
almost be schoolhouses. But after seeing them oftener one 
feels that there is something in their severity which answers 
to a need for restraint in human nature, and one can under- 
stand that many a man and woman may look back with 
grateful feelings to the church in the woods, and be thankful 
for the influence, so sincere and direct, which moulded their 
character. 

There is a chapel called "Salem," belonging to one of 
these German congregations, which seems to embody to 
perfection this peculiar ideal of a disciplined, unemotional 
faith. It is very old, and the tradition survives that the man 
who established it lived in constant fear of Indians; and 
when they were out on the war-path he would, for weeks 



ZTbc IRevo ISribge 163 

together, hide his wife away at night in a hollow sycamore, 
like the maid of the Dismal Swamp. 

This Salem chapel is of gray limestone, standing on a 
cross-country road. It seems remote and isolated in its 
woods. The singing birds and droning bees make a daily 
choir about it, forest odors sweeten the air, and busy chip- 
munks and small wild life give a gentle animation to the 
neighborhood. The still gray church waits for the days of 
worship, when the country boys and girls, the mothers and 
working farmers, gather in it to listen to the pastor who 
makes his visitation. There is an indescribable charm 
in this chapel in the woods, standing as so many such stood 
in early days, when the faith in its purity was the mainspring 
of life to the men who cleared the forests. 

The Dunker dress gives one of the present-day charac- 
teristics to the valley. It is cut on the simplest lines, and 
is generally black. The bonnet covered with black cloth 
flares slightly, framing but not hiding the face. The 
smoothly drawn hair under its prim halo gives a serious look 
even to young faces ; and when beauty that will not be denied 
is so framed, there is nothing more fascinating than this 
quaint head dress. Once, looking up in a street car in 
Hagerstown, a picture was seen fit for an artist, A tall 
and slender young woman sat opposite, whose sensitive 
face seemed to shine with an inner light. Her serious eyes 
were deeply blue, an exquisite color tinged her delicate skin, 
and the golden hair which should have been smoothly 
banded under the severe black bonnet, broke away in 
tendrils like a vine. It was a picture of youth restrained, 
of beauty independent of setting, and spiritually refined 
by the discipline of a somewhat rigid faith. 



i64 Zbe antietam 

There is another type often seen through the country 
or in town on market days; the woman of middle age, whose 
dark eyes are calm, and whose face expresses a great deal of 
practical sense and the look of a full experience of life, un- 
dergone without worry. These are the wives of farmers, 
often very well to do, whose lives are full of business, who 
work early and late, yet who seem to meet the changes and 
chances of life with a quiet spirit. Who can tell what a 
factor in this placid look is the mere fact that the wearer 
never has to consider the fashion in bonnets. 

To every part of America which the Germans settled, 
they took this sincere religious sentiment, and Whitefield 
writing of his experiences with them in the South says: 

"They are remarkable for their sweetness and sim- 
plicity of behavior. They talk little; they think much. 
Most of them, I believe, are Lutherans." 

The next bridge which crosses the Antietam after that 
at Bridgeport is the bridge at the Old Forge. To find it one 
can leave Hagerstown by the Leitersburg pike, and turning 
off into a crossroad, go through the delightful little settle- 
ment of Fiddlersburgh. One could hardly weight down such 
a drift of houses with the name of village. It is a scattered 
collection, with as little coherence as if one flung a handful 
of grain in the air, and let it light as it would. Fiddlers- 
burgh turns around the foot of a hill, follows up a rocky 
slope, and wandei s into a wood, with as little plan as a boy 
rambling at large on a holiday. Its log houses and stone 
walls, its irregular enclosures and bits of garden, its curious 
porches and chimneys, are as unique and impossible to 
imitate as a wandering air, or a bird's flight. There was a 
time, when at any hour, from morning till night, the air 



Zbc Bribge at ®Ib Jforge 165 

trembled to the quivering of fiddle-strings, and light jigs 
and melodies floated to the woods, to mingle their quavering 
notes with the chirping of birds. It was then it earned its 
name of Fiddlersburgh. 

Following the country road, by field and farms, beauti- 
ful when the fruit trees blossom or when the grain is ripe, one 
comes again to the Antietam and the Old Forge. Here the 
stream is wide, and broken into several channels by islands 
large enough to carry a growth of trees and bushes. The 
water rushes between them with a great hurry and noise, 
down to the mill dam. The bridge is a large one of three 
arches, spreading wide over the water. Under one end of it, 
after it reaches dry land, is a cattle run. Within a stone's- 
throw is a large stone mill, as different as possible from the 
quaint rambling m^ill at Trovinger's. This is three stories 
high, a square, massive building, now unhappily deserted, 
and beginning to fall to pieces, with great cracks in the walls. 
Across the road, up on a hill, is a stone house with the un- 
mistakable air of having been a home of the "quality. " An 
arched doorway in the side wall gives it a look of distinction. 
It has a curious appearance of having no particular front, 
every approach being equally important, all equally exposed. 
The land slopes away from it in every direction. This hilly 
character makes the place attractive, and the water being 
unusually noisy here, and a cluster of postal delivery boxes 
perched on the end of the bridge, on poles, like pigeons' 
nests, makes it seem a friendly enough place. The road 
which crosses the bridge is a well travelled one, being the 
way from Hagerstown to Smithsburgh. 

The name of Old Forge belongs to the place because the 
Hughes brothers had their furnace and nail forge at this spot. 



1 66 ^be antietam 

They were a family of Irish descent, whose progenitor came 
over in 1750, and they became very prominent in the history 
of Washington County. They acquired vast tracts of land, 
so that it was said that the whole face of the South Mountain 
from where Black Rock looks out like an eagle over the 
valley, to the Pennsylvania Line, and from the top of the 
ridge to the banks of the Antietam, was owned by them. 
They operated several furnaces. Mount -^tna, Mont Alto, 
and the Forge, fought in the Revolutionary War, and identi- 
fied themselves thoroughly with the fortunes of their adopted 
country, with all the adaptability of Irishmen who throw 
themselves heart and soul into the interests of a new 
land. 

The tablets on the bridge, commemorating its first erec- 
tion in 1763 and its rebuilding in 1793, carry on them two 
other names, intimately connected with the early history of 
the valley, those of Jacob Friend and Lancelot Jaques. 
Charles Friend came to the valley in 1739 and settled at the 
mouth of the sister stream, the Conococheague. He was one 
of the very first to whom grants of land were made. His 
tracts were on the Williamsport bank of the stream, and he 
called them "Sweed's Delight, " the second "Dear Bargain, " 
and the third "None Left," giving a concise history of his 
acquisitions. 

Lancelot Jaques came later to the valley, having first 
settled in Frederick. He was a French Huguenot, a man of 
very charming address, who came over as agent for English- 
men owning plantations, absentee landlords who expected 
an unending stream of money to flow from the new country 
to the old. He also took up land in the western part of the 
valley, near Indian Spring. 



^be Bribge at ©It) Jorge 167 

It seems curious that, being on such a long travelled road, 
connected with some of the oldest interests in the county, 
the bridge at the Old Forge should be in reality the youngest 
of the bridges. 



CHAPTER XV 

The Two Bridges at Leitersburg 

TN going from Hagerstown to Leitersburg, one travels 
* through a beautiful reach of valley land, fertile and 
almost level, which stretches unbroken up into Pennsylvania, 
and is known as the "Long Meadows." It is so rich and 
desirable, and so well watered, that it was the first part of 
the valley to be taken up by settlers, and the earliest grants 
of land in what is now Washington County were made 
almost entirely to settlers in the Long Meadows. 

The earliest divisions of the county were entirely dif- 
ferent from what they are now. The Hagerstown valley was 
a part of Frederick County. Between the mountains and 
the Antietam, from the Potomac River on the South to the 
Pennsylvania Line on the North, lay the Antietam Hundred. 
The tract was so large as to be unwieldy, and was later 
divided into the Upper Middle and Lower Antietam Hun- 
dreds. On the western bank of the stream, the Salisbury 
Hundred stretched from the Line down to an old bounding 
road near Hagerstown. Below this road down to the Poto- 
mac lay the Marsh Hundred. This division by Hundreds 
was borrowed from England, where the name of this terri- 
torial unit was supposed to be derived from the grouping of 

i68 



^be ^wo Bribaes at Xcltcrsburg 169 

one hundred families for purposes of defence. It was larger 
than a parish, and smaller than a county. 

Some of the most noted names of early days are associated 
with the Long Meadows. Two well known men owned land 
in it, but never lived on their holdings ; these were the cele- 
brated Colonel Henry Bouquet, and Daniel Dulaney. But 
others not less prominent lived there, and in some instances 
the old houses which they built are still standing. The 
earliest grant to land in the valley is believed to be that 
given to the stout Yorkshireman, Colonel Thomas Cresap, 
who acquired his tract in 1739. At about the same time 
Charles Friend, and Jeremiah Jack, Nicholas Christ, Jona- 
than Hager, and others, became owners of land in the neigh- 
borhood. On the Long Meadows once lived Colonel Hart, 
whose daughter Lucretia married Henry Clay, and the house 
where he lived still stands. General Sprigg lived in great 
state at "Paradise," and kept up a magnificent establish- 
ment. 

Among them all there was no stronger personality than 
that of Colonel Cresap who was a typical frontiersman. His 
house was a fort, built over a spring of water, so that if he 
was besieged by Indians his supply was secure. He was a 
cunning strategist, and a great Indian fighter. No one made 
war on them more constantly, nor more ferociously than he, 
nor with greater success. When the red man went on the 
war-path, all the neighbors took refuge at Cresap's fort. 

He seems to have been one who scented the battle with as 
keen a joy as the war-horse of old, and he did not fight the 
aborigines only. When the German settlers were believed 
to be dealing unfairly with the State of Maryland, when the 
Line between Pennsylvania and Maryland was in dispute, 



I70 Zl)C Hntletam 

Cresap took arms against the Germans. In this border 
warfare he was taken prisoner, and kept in confinement in 
Philadelphia for more than a year. He is said to have amused 
and provoked the citizens by calling the Quaker City the 
"finest in the Province of Maryland. " Another time, when 
he wished to force the Assembly at Annapolis to protect the 
rights of Maryland, he formed a company of young men, who 
painted themselves and dressed like Indians; and marched 
with them as far as Federick on his way to the capital. 
He must have been dissuaded from following out this ad- 
venture, for we hear no more of them beyond that point. 
He came to America as a lad of fifteen, and first lived 
near Havre-de-Grace, a town whose beautiful name is so 
grotesquely anglicized into " Havader-Grass. " He married 
young, in the first instance, but his second venture was made 
when he was over eighty years old. England commissioned 
him to map out the Potomac River and its sources, and he 
was chosen to lay out a road between Cumberland and 
Pittsburg. After he left the Long Meadows he founded a 
town near Cumberland, which he named Cresaptown, but 
which was afterward named Oldtown. But when the In- 
dians came back to the Hagerstown valley, burning and 
murdering, he returned and fought them as fiercely as ever. 
He showed the stalwart stuff of which he was made by his 
activity in old age, for when over seventy he made a trip to 
England; and when more than one hundred he sailed up 
into Nova Scotian waters, no easy journey in those times. 
His hospitality, his tales of the frontier, his joviality, made 
him a splendid companion. Such was the product of the old 
world grafted on the new, and of such fibre the men who 
settled on the Long Meadows. 



Zhe ZIwo BribGcs at Xdtersbura 171 

After following up the Meadows for a distance, the road 
turns at an angle towards Leitersburg. It passes through a 
beautiful stretch of gently swelling country, not in the suc- 
cession of steep, wave-like ridges which characterizes so 
much of the valley floor. Here it merely rounds into gentle 
slopes, often crested by woodland, falling now and then to 
low, emerald meadows, watered by full streams. Through- 
out this tract, the close neighborhood of Pennsylvania begins 
to be felt. There is a little less of the sweet untidiness of 
southern farms, a little more of the neatness of the Pennsyl- 
vanian. With this change comes, of course, a slight loss of 
the picturesque, for it is undeniable that a loosening of the 
reins of order helps to make sketchable material. A white- 
washed fence with every paling in place, and well swept 
path, and lawn cut to a nicety, are never the same thing in 
the picture as a stone wall a little ragged about the coping 
with a tangle of hollyhocks and tiger lilies. 

Along this part of the valley the thrifty Germans settled. 
They built themselves saw-mills, grist-mills, and hemp-mills 
along the Antietam, and had tanneries and distilleries. The 
hemp they raised was used in the rope walks at Hagerstown, 
owned by Colonel Hart and Nathaniel Rochester. Some 
of the mills are still standing, or have been lebuilt once or 
twice. The old stone houses survive at least in part, having 
been built on and added to. The house of the first Leiter, 
who gave his name to the village, still exists as part of a 
larger dwelling. There are, too, many old log houses, with 
heavy, square-built chimneys on the outside, giving them 
a very quaint look. The Germans became prosperous, and 
even wealthy in this favored country, and from having 
arrived, as an early writei says, with all their worldly 



172 ^be antietam 

possessions in very small compass, and chief and most valu- 
able among them, a copy of the Heidelberg Catechism, 
they handed down money and lands to their children. 

A curious story is told in connection with one of the 
distilleries in this district, which was owned by Mr. Joseph 
Gabby. A man went to it, and stole a copper measure with 
a quantity of whiskey in it. He was followed, and caught 
with it in his possession, and sent to the penitentiary. 

As soon as he was released, he went back by stealth, and 
succeeded in taking away once more the very same copper 
vessel with the same amount of liquor. He seemed an 
incorrigible evil-doer, and was taken again, and sent once 
more to prison. 

He served his two years, and would, one would think, 
have been cured of his desire to steal from Mr. Joseph Gabby. 
But the poor creature, as quickly as might be after his second 
release, possessed by one idea, stole back to the object which 
fascinated him, and for the third time ran away with the 
coveted copper measure. He was taken again, but this 
time the judge refused to sentence him, not considering him 
responsible for such a curious mania. In the olden times he 
would have been thought bewitched ; to-day his freak might 
be ascribed to a sort of hypnotism exercised over his rather 
feeble mind by the bright copper vessel. 

Before the Civil War, a constant stream of escaping 
slaves passed through this country, stealing away from their 
masters in Virginia. They followed the old trail along the 
mountain top, that the Indian warriors and hunters had 
used, always preferring the high ground for travelling. 
They would then creep down into the valley in the neighbor- 
hood of Leitersburg, to cross the line into the free State 



^be ^wo Bridges at Xeltersburg 173 

beyond. Many a Tom, Dick, and Harry crossed the Antie- 
tam here under cover of night, and crept along the road 
toward Pennsylvania. We can see them in imagination, 
half-wild creatures, black men and bright mulattoes, stealing 
through the fords, or sculling over when the water was high. 
It is a memorable thing in connection with the stream, that 
slavery terminated at either end of the Antietam. Here it 
passed into free country while the great battle fought at its 
mouth decided the fate of slavery in America forever. 

One of the best known names in connection with this part 
of the valley, is that of the Leiters. In early days it was 
variously spelled, as Lyder, Leidre, and Lider. The original 
settler of that name was Jacob Leiter, who in 1762, was 
granted the tract on which Leitersburg now stands. He 
purchased it from the celebrated Indian fighter Poe. The 
name of the tract was "Well Taught, "and some of the most 
valuable farms in the district are situated on the land he 
then acquired. He had a large family ot sons and daughters. 
Some became farmers and millers. A grandson was an 
architect and builder, and built the old Jacob's church near 
the Line, and the first brick schoolhouse in the neighbor- 
hood. 

There are some delightful names among the grants in this 
district, such as "Huckleberry Hall," and "The Hollow 
House," and the pretty "Welcome to Antietam." The 
naming of these old tracts of land presents an interesting 
study, and is plainly a survival of the days of chivalry. To 
the settlers in the States, who had left the countries of titles 
and armorial bearings, they answered to the "devices" 
which were so popular in the Middle Ages. These devices 
were, properly speaking, composed of two parts, the "body" 



174 ^be antietam 

and the "soul," the former being the painted emblem, and 
the latter the motto or legend which expressed its meaning. 
They were never the property of the family, as was the 
crest ; but only of the individual by or for whom they were 
composed. Women of wit were fond of inventing devices 
and embroidering them for their friends. In English and 
in Scottish halls may still be seen their 

needle-craft, * 

And curious tapestry. 
Which moulders on the walls, brave scrolls 

Of dim antiquity. 
Embodying many a quaint device 

Of love and chivalry. 

' As a perfect example of the old device we have the 
heart-shaped knot of Sir Thomas Heneage, with the legend, 
"Fast though Untied" ; and the device of Anne of Brittany, 
"Un seul desir." The veiled meaning, of which these give 
an example, was an essential part of the device, which was 
meant only to be understood by the few. They were for 
mystification, with a covert meaning, obscure. They 
hinted at a condition, a state of mind. A reference was 
made in such a way as to be clear to the persons in the 
secret only. 

These conditions were often carried out in the naming of 
land grants. Some were purely allusive, and of such a 
character are the obscure "Need Not," and the musical 
"Keep Tryste." "Summit of Policy," the name of one of 
the first Hughes grants, fulfils the condition of not making 
its meaning clear to the uninitiated, yet indicates some 
finessing in acquiring the property. Some are long, such 



^be Zvoo Bdbgee at XeitereburQ 175 

as "Search well and you will find it," "The third time of 
asking, " and "I am glad it is no worse. " 

Some tickled the ear with alliteration, as in "Nancy's 
Fancy," "Darling's Delight," and "Penny Pack Pond." 
There is a pleasant hint of bachelor freedom in the pretty 
"Toddy Lane" ; and The "Leather Button, " would seem to 
be our friend the Leather Bottell, badly spelled, as were 
many things in the old clerks' records. 

Some were of a sour turn, as "Very Cold, " and " Trouble 
Enough," "Hurry," "Strife," and the curt and fierce 
"Slay!" 

Over many is the trail of woman. So were celebrated 
"Nanny," "The Dutch Lass," and "Virgin Fair." One 
was "Nancy's Content," and another "Magdalen's Fancy." 
And though these latter names are obvious, and do not carry 
out the condition of obscurity, one must like them, as well as 
the hearty "Lads and Lasses," "Paradise Regained," and 
the pretty "Flaggy Meadow," and "Agree in Peace " i 

To Cresap's grants were given names of localities in the 
old country: "Skipton-on-Craven," "Leeds," and "Lin- 
ton"; and the attractive "Skie Thorn." They give a 
picturesqueness to the study of old deeds and records, a 
flavor of romantic conceits, a pleasant exercise of wits. The 
man who named his places "Sly Fox," and "The Old Fox 
Deceived," must always have chuckled to himself when he 
had occasion to write the titles. And it is a pleasant com- 
mentary on our great-grandfathers that they amused them- 
selves in this way, even over such dry and dusty matters 
as land grants and legal documents. 

The visit to the last two bridges over the Antietam was 
made at that lovely season when the grain fields are ripe. 



176 ^be antietam 

The whole drive through the valley was of great beauty. 
The gentle slopes and swelling lands were in full harvest-tide, 
and the grain so deeply golden as to be almost a copper red. 
In many fields the wheat was still untouched, in others the 
harvesting was going on. And these red-gold fields had 
always their background of groups of dark trees, bits of old 
forest left standing, and behind all, the exquisite blue of the 
hills. It was a clear evening, a few compact cloud masses, 
floating in air as clear as crystal, made the surrounding sky 
seem the more limpid. The breeze had the exhilaration of 
the mountain, and the fragrance of pine and fern. In many 
fields the com rows cut through the tawny grain with lines 
of pale green. And everywhere were men working with 
reapers, horses straining at their loads, hay wagons coming 
down the road with their immense burdens, and cattle on 
their evening home-coming. It was a scene of prosperity 
and thrifty beauty. And many of the old stone farm houses 
which stood by the way knit the present to the past. 

Before the village is reached, the road crosses the An- 
tietam by the first of the Leitersburg bridges. It is a large 
and handsome one, built by the Lloyds, who made the 
turnpike bridge at Funkstown. The stream has changed 
its course since the bridge was erected, for one arch is en- 
tirely over dry land. At the time of the heavy rains of 1884 
the course of many streams in this part of the valley was 
altered. 

At either end of the bridge, the curtain walls make a 
beautiful curve, and then straighten out to meet the full 
width of the road, and this feature gives a distinctive touch 
which is very pleasing. The bridge stands high out of the 
water, and has well rounded abutments to divide the ice- 



^be Zvoo Brl^ge0 at Xeitcreburg 177 

packs. A veil of faint green colors the stones, an effect 
produced by a charming growth of small ferns, which root 
between them. The water willows and sycamores which 
follow along the bank hide an old mill at a distance around 
the bend of the stream. Both bridge and surroundings are 
very interesting, and differ totally in character from the next 
one, which is found on the other side of the village on a dirt 
road, which leads up into Pennsylvania. 

This last of the Antietam bridges, as was the first, is the 
work of John Weaver ; but in spite of his having built so 
many, he was still inventive, and made of it something quite 
unique in the series, and entirely in harmony with its sur- 
roundings. It is just the bridge for a cross-country road, 
where the stream is shallow, and shows more of the rivulet 
than the river. The Antietam takes on at this spot quite a 
different character. It throws away its veil of romance, 
casts aside the mantle of water willows behind which it is 
wont to hide, leaves off the twists and bends round which its 
waters curve and slide, and comes frankly to light, a rippling 
stream between sunny meadows. Along its edge on one 
bank stand pollard willows, in a perfectly straight row, 
evenly spaced on emerald sward. In their stiff and avenue- 
like effect they make one think of the borders of canals in 
Holland. The rich green meadow which shows between 
the trunks, helps out this illusion of artificial planting. 
Opposite, the growth is more natural and artless, but the 
whole character of the spot is very different from the usual 
romantic appearance of the Antietam banks. 

John Weaver made for this crossing a rustic looking 
bridge, with a narrow roadway; a bridge for country lanes 
and calling to mind pictures of English rural bridges, small 
and rather rude, but attractive in their rusticity. 



178 Zhc Hntietam 

It was a piece of rare good fortune that preserved all 
these bridges through the dangers of war. Large bodies of 
troops passed over them on their way to the battlefields of 
Antietam and Gettysburg, leaving them unharmed. The 
turnpike bridge at Leitersburg was most in danger, for 
the order was given to destroy it. Some of the people of the 
neighborhood, very much disturbed over this piece of news, 
got up a petition representing that there were very good 
fords through the creek, and that the destruction of the 
bridge would not keep back the enemy and would only 
work great distress to the country people. General Lee then 
recalled the order for the destruction of the bridge. Had 
they been destroyed by the troops that thundered over and 
by them, there is no doubt that iron bridges would have 
replaced them, and the Antietam would have been robbed of 
all the poetry and beauty of her road-crossings. Fortunate 
was the State which could have invading armies pass 
through, and leave so little mark. 



Ji Selection from the 
Catalogue of 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



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" One of the most attractive garden books of 
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In a style admirably in keeping with the tranquil, 
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G. P. Putnam's Sons 
New York London 



XV. 






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